


Different New Moon

by orionreece



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Fake Character Death, Gay Beau Swan, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, in the meadow, new moon, vampire Beau Swan, what if Laurent changed beau
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 57,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22781932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orionreece/pseuds/orionreece
Summary: When Beau Swan runs into Laurent in the meadow, the wolf pack shows up just seconds too late. Resulting in Beau being bitten and changed into a vampire.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Beau Swan, Jacob Black/Beau Swan, Jacob Black/Edward Cullen, Jacob Black/Edward Cullen/Beau Swan
Comments: 23
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken the words of New Moon and changed it up, so most of this does not belong to me!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited and any mistakes were fixed, boy were there a lot of them.

I was ninety-nine percent sure I was dreaming.

The reasons I was so certain were that, first, I was standing in a bright shaft of sunlight—the kind of blinding clear sun that never shone on my drizzly new hometown in Forks, Washington—and second, I was looking at my Grandpa Geoffrey.

Pop had been dead for six years now, so that was solid evidence toward the dream theory.

Pop hadn't changed much; his face looked just the same as I remembered it. The skin was soft and withered, bent into a thousand tiny creases that clung gently to the bone underneath. Like a dried apricot, but with a puff of thick white hair standing out in a cloud around it.

Our mouths—his a wizened picker—spread into the same surprised half-smile at just the same time.

Apparently, he hadn't been expecting to see me, either.

I was about to ask him a question; I had so many—What was he doing here in my dream? What had he been up to in the past six years? Was Gran okay, and had they found each other, wherever they were?—but he opened his mouth when I did, so I stopped to let him go first. He paused, too, and then we both smiled at the little awkwardness.

"Beau!"

It wasn't Pop who called my name, and we both turned to see the addition to our small reunion. I didn't have to look to know who it was; this was a voice I would know anywhere—know, and respond to, whether I was awake or asleep… or even dead, I'd bet. The voice I'd walk through fire for—or, less dramatically, slosh every day through the cold and endless rain for Edward.

Even though I was always thrilled to see him—conscious or otherwise—and even though I was almost positive that I was dreaming, I panicked as Edward walked toward us through the glaring sunlight.

I panicked because Pop didn't know that I was in love with a vampire—nobody knew that—so how was I supposed to explain the fact that the brilliant sunbeams were shattering off his skin into a thousand rainbow shards like he was made of crystal or diamond?

Well, Pop, you might have noticed that my boyfriend glitters. It's just something he does in the sun. Don't worry about it…

What was he doing? The whole reason he lived in Forks, the rainiest place in the world, was so that he could be outside in the daytime without exposing his family's secret. Yet here he was, strolling gracefully toward me—with the most beautiful smile on his angel's face—as if I were the only one here.

In that second, I wished that I was not the one exception to his mysterious talent; I usually felt grateful that I was the only person whose thoughts he couldn't hear just as clearly as if they were spoken aloud.

But now I wished he could hear me, too, so that he could hear the warning I was screaming in my head.

I shot a panicked glance back at Pop, and saw that it was too late. He was just turning to stare back at me, his eyes as alarmed as mine.

Edward—still smiling so beautifully that my heart felt like it was going to swell up and burst through my chest—put his arm around my shoulder and turned to face my grandfather.

Pop's expression surprised me. Instead of looking horrified, he was staring at me sheepishly, as if waiting for a scolding. And she was standing in such a strange position—one arm held awkwardly away from his body, stretched out and then curled around the air. Like he had his arm around someone I couldn't see, someone invisible…

Only then, as I looked at the bigger picture, did I notice the huge gilt frame that enclosed my grandfather's form. Uncomprehending, I raised the hand that wasn't wrapped around Edward's waist and reached out to touch him. He mimicked the movement exactly, mirrored it. But where our fingers should have met, there was nothing but cold glass…

With a dizzying jolt, my dream abruptly became a nightmare.

There was no Pop.

That was me. Me in a mirror. Me—ancient, creased, and withered.

Edward stood beside me, casting no reflection, excruciatingly lovely and forever seventeen.

He pressed his icy, perfect lips against my wasted cheek.

"Happy birthday," he whispered.

I woke with a start—my eyelids popping open wide—and gasped. Dull gray light, the familiar light of an overcast morning, took the place of the blinding sun in my dream.

Just a dream, I told myself. It was only a dream. I took a deep breath, and then jumped again when my alarm went off. The little calendar in the corner of the clock's display informed me that today was September thirteenth.

Only a dream, but prophetic enough in one way, at least. Today was my birthday. I was officially eighteen years old.

I'd been dreading this day for months.

All through the perfect summer—the happiest summer I had ever had, the happiest summer anyone anywhere had ever had, and the rainiest summer in the history of the Olympic Peninsula—this bleak date had lurked in ambush, waiting to spring.

And now that it had hit, it was even worse than I'd feared it would be. I could feel it—I was older.

Every day I got older, but this was different, worse, quantifiable. I was eighteen.

And Edward never would be.

When I went to brush my teeth, I was almost surprised that the face in the mirror hadn't changed. I stared at myself, looking for some sign of impending wrinkles in my ivory skin. The only creases were the ones on my forehead, though, and I knew that if I could manage to relax, they would disappear. I couldn't.

My eyebrows stayed lodged in a worried line over my anxious blue eyes.

It was just a dream, I reminded myself again. Just a dream… but also my worst nightmare.

I skipped breakfast, in a hurry to get out of the house as quickly as possible. I wasn't entirely able to avoid my dad, and so I had to spend a few minutes acting cheerful. I honestly tried to be excited about the gifts I'd asked him not to get me, but every time I had to smile, it felt like I might start crying.

I struggled to get a grip on myself as I drove to school. The vision of Pop—I would not think of it as me—was hard to get out of my head. I couldn't feel anything but despair until I pulled into the familiar parking lot behind Forks High School and spotted Edward leaning motionlessly against his polished silver Volvo, like a marble tribute to some forgotten pagan god of beauty. The dream had not done him justice.

And he was waiting there for me, just the same as every other day. Despair momentarily vanished; wonder took its place. Even after half a year with him, I still couldn't believe that I deserved this degree of good fortune.

His sister Alice was standing by his side, waiting for me, too. Of course Edward and Alice weren't really related (in Forks the story was that all the Cullen siblings were adopted by Dr. Carlisle Cullen and his wife, Esme, both plainly too young to have teenage children), but their skin was precisely the same pale shade, their eyes had the same strange golden tint, with the same deep, bruise-like shadows beneath them. Her face, like his, was also startlingly beautiful. To someone in the know—someone like me—these similarities marked them for what they were.

The sight of Alice waiting there—her tawny eyes brilliant with excitement, and a small silver-wrapped square in her hands—made me frown. I'd told Alice I didn't want anything, anything, not gifts or even attention, for my birthday. Obviously, my wishes were being ignored.

I slammed the door of my '53 Chevy truck—a shower of rust specks fluttered down to the wet blacktop—and walked slowly toward where they waited. Alice skipped forward to meet me, her pixie face glowing under her spiky black hair.

"Happy birthday, Beau!"

"Shh!" I hissed, glancing around the lot to make sure no one had heard her. The last thing I wanted was some kind of celebration of the black event.

She ignored me. "Do you want to open your present now or later?" she asked eagerly as we made our way to where Edward still waited.

"No presents," I protested in a mumble. She finally seemed to process my mood. 

"Okay… later, then. Did you like the scrapbook your mom sent you? And the camera from Charlie?"

I sighed. Of course she would know what my birthday presents were. Edward wasn't the only member of his family with unusual skills. Alice would have "seen" what my parents were planning as soon as they'd decided that themselves.

"Yeah. They're great."

"I think it's a nice idea. You're only a senior once. Might as well document the experience."

"How many times have you been a senior?"

"That's different."

We reached Edward then, and he held out his hand for mine. I took it eagerly, forgetting, for a moment, my glum mood. His skin was, as always, smooth, hard, and very cold. He gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. I looked into his liquid topaz eyes, and my heart gave a not-quite-so-gentle squeeze of its own.

Hearing the stutter in my heartbeats, he smiled again.

He lifted his free hand and traced one cool fingertip around the outside of my lips as he spoke. "So, as discussed, I am not allowed to wish you a happy birthday, is that correct?"

"Yes. That is correct." I could never quite mimic the flow of his perfect, formal articulation. It was something that could only be picked up in an earlier century.

"Just checking." He ran his hand through his tousled bronze hair. "You might have changed your mind. Most people seem to enjoy things like birthdays and gifts."

Alice laughed, and the sound was all silver, a wind chime. "Of course you'll enjoy it. Everyone is supposed to be nice to you today and give you your way, Beau. What's the worst that could happen?"

She meant it as a rhetorical question.

"Getting older," I answered anyway, and my voice was not as steady as I wanted it to be.

Beside me, Edward's smile tightened into a hard line.

"Eighteen isn't very old," Alice said. "Don't people usually wait till they're twenty-nine to get upset over birthdays?"

"It's older than Edward," I mumbled.

He sighed.

"Technically," she said, keeping her tone light. "Just by one little year, though."

And I supposed… if I could be sure of the future I wanted, sure that I would get to spend forever with Edward, and Alice and the rest of the Cullens (preferably not as a wrinkled little old man)… then a year or two one direction or the other wouldn't matter to me so much. But Edward was dead set against any future that changed me. Any future that made me like him—that made me immortal, too.

An impasse, he called it.

I couldn't really see Edward's point, to be honest. What was so great about mortality? Being a vampire didn't look like such a terrible thing—not the way the Cullens did it, anyway.

"What time will you be at the house?" Alice continued, changing the subject. From her expression, she was up to exactly the kind of thing I'd been hoping to avoid.

"I didn't know I had plans to be there."

"Oh, be fair, Beau!" she complained. "You aren't going to ruin all our fun like that, are you?"

"I thought my birthday was about what I want."

"I'll get him from Charlie's right after school," Edward told her, ignoring me altogether.

"I have to work," I protested.

"You don't, actually," Alice told me smugly. "I already spoke to Mrs. Newton about it. She's trading your shifts. She said to tell you 'Happy Birthday.'"

"I—I still can't come over," I stammered, scrambling for an excuse. "I, well, I haven't watched Romeo and Juliet yet for English."

Alice snorted. "You have Romeo and Juliet memorized."

"But Mr. Berty said we needed to see it performed to fully appreciate it—that's how Shakespeare intended it to be presented."

Edward rolled his eyes.

"You've already seen the movie," Alice accused.

"But not the nineteen-sixties version. Mr. Berty said it was the best."

Finally, Alice lost the smug smile and glared at me. "This can be easy, or this can be hard, Beau, but one way or the other—"

Edward interrupted her threat. "Relax, Alice. If Beau wants to watch a movie, then he can. It's his birthday."

"So there," I added.

"I'll bring him over around seven," he continued. "That will give you more time to set up."

Alice's laughter chimed again. "Sounds good. See you tonight, Beau! It'll be fun, you'll see." She grinned—the wide smile exposed all her perfect, glistening teeth—then reached up to peck me on the cheek and danced off toward her first class before I could respond.

"Edward, please—" I started to beg, but he pressed one cool finger to my lips.

"Let's discuss it later. We're going to be late for class."

No one bothered to stare at us as we took our usual seats in the back of the classroom (we had almost every class together now—it was amazing the favors Edward could get the female administrators to do for him). Edward and I had been together too long now to be an object of gossip anymore. Even Mike Newton didn't bother to give me the glum stare that used to make me feel a little guilty. He smiled now instead, and I was glad he seemed to have accepted that we could only be friends. Mike had changed over the summer—his face had lost some of the roundness, making his cheekbones more prominent, and he was wearing his pale blond hair a new way; instead of bristly, it was longer and gelled into a carefully casual disarray. It was easy to see where his inspiration came from—but Edward's look wasn't something that could be achieved through imitation.

As the day progressed, I considered ways to get out of whatever was going down at the Cullen house tonight. It would be bad enough to have to celebrate when I was in the mood to mourn. But, worse than that, this was sure to involve attention and gifts.

Attention is never a good thing, as any other accident-prone klutz would agree. No one wants a spotlight when they're likely to fall on their face.

And I'd very pointedly asked—well, ordered really—that no one give me any presents this year. It looked like Charlie and Renee weren't the only ones who had decided to overlook that.

I'd never had much money, and that had never bothered me. Renee had raised me on a kindergarten teacher's salary. Charlie wasn't getting rich at his job, either—he was the police chief here in the tiny town of Forks. My only personal income came from the three days a week I worked at the local sporting goods store. In a town this small, I was lucky to have a job. Every penny I made went into my microscopic college fund. (College was Plan B. I was still hoping for Plan A, but Edward was just so stubborn about leaving me human…)

Edward had a lot of money—I didn't even want to think about how much. Money meant next to nothing to Edward or the rest of the Cullens. It was just something that accumulated when you had unlimited time on your hands and a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market. Edward didn't seem to understand why I objected to him spending money on me—why it made me uncomfortable if he took me to an expensive restaurant in Seattle, why he wasn't allowed to buy me a car that could reach speeds over fifty-five miles an hour, or why I wouldn't let him pay my college tuition (he was ridiculously enthusiastic about Plan B). Edward thought I was being unnecessarily difficult.

But how could I let him give me things when I had nothing to reciprocate with? He, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to be with me. Anything he gave me on top of that just threw us more out of balance.

As the day went on, neither Edward nor Alice brought my birthday up again, and I began to relax a little.

We sat at our usual table for lunch.

A strange kind of truce existed at that table. The three of us—Edward, Alice, and I—sat on the extreme southern end of the table. Now that the "older" and somewhat scarier (in Emmett's case, certainly) Cullen siblings had graduated, Alice and Edward did not seem quite so intimidating, and we did not sit here alone. My other friends, Mike and Jessica (who were in the awkward post-breakup friendship phase), Angela and Ben (whose relationship had survived the summer), Eric, Conner, Tyler, and Lauren (though that last one didn't really count in the friend category) all sat at the same table, on the other side of an invisible line. That line dissolved on sunny days when Edward and Alice always skipped school, and then the conversation would swell out effortlessly to include me.

Edward and Alice didn't find this minor ostracism odd or hurtful the way I would have. They barely noticed it. People always felt strangely ill at ease with the Cullens, almost afraid for some reason they couldn't explain to themselves. I was a rare exception to that rule. Sometimes it bothered Edward how very comfortable I was with being close to him. He thought he was hazardous to my health—an opinion I rejected vehemently whenever he voiced it.

The afternoon passed quickly. School ended, and Edward walked me to my truck as he usually did. But this time, he held the passenger door open for me. Alice must have been taking his car home so that he could keep me from making a run for it.

I folded my arms and made no move to get out of the rain. "It's my birthday, don't I get to drive?"

"I'm pretending it's not your birthday, just as you wished."

"If it's not my birthday, then I don't have to go to your house tonight…"

"All right." He shut the passenger door and walked past me to open the driver's side. "Happy birthday."

"Shh," I shushed him halfheartedly. I climbed in the opened door, wishing he'd taken the other offer.

Edward played with the radio while I drove, shaking his head in disapproval.

"Your radio has horrible reception."

I frowned. I didn't like it when he picked on my truck. The truck was great—it had personality.

"You want a nice stereo? Drive your own car." I was so nervous about Alice's plans, on top of my already gloomy mood, that the words came out sharper than I'd meant them. I was hardly ever bad-tempered with Edward, and my tone made him press his lips together to keep from smiling.

When I parked in front of Charlie's house, he reached over to take my face in his hands. He handled me very carefully, pressing just the tips of his fingers softly against my temples, my cheekbones, my jawline.

Like I was especially breakable. Which was exactly the case—compared with him, at least.

"You should be in a good mood, today of all days," he whispered. His sweet breath fanned across my face.

"And if I don't want to be in a good mood?" I asked, my breathing uneven.

His golden eyes smoldered. "Too bad."

My head was already spinning by the time he leaned closer and pressed his icy lips against mine. As he intended, no doubt, I forgot all about my worries, and concentrated on remembering how to inhale and exhale.

His mouth lingered on mine, cold and smooth and gentle, until I wrapped my arms around his neck and threw myself into the kiss with a little too much enthusiasm. I could feel his lips curve upward as he let go of my face and reached back to unlock my grip on him.

Edward had drawn many careful lines for our physical relationship, with the intent being to keep me alive.

Though I respected the need for maintaining a safe distance between my skin and his razor-sharp, venom-coated teeth, I tended to forget about trivial things like that when he was kissing me.

"Be good, please," he breathed against my cheek. He pressed his lips gently to mine one more time and then pulled away, folding my arms across my stomach.

My pulse was thudding in my ears. I put one hand over my heart. It drummed hyper-actively under my palm.

"Do you think I'll ever get better at this?" I wondered, mostly to myself. "That my heart might someday stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me?"

"I really hope not," he said, a bit smug.

I rolled my eyes. "Let's go watch the Capulets and Montagues hack each other up, all right?"

"Your wish, my command."

Edward sprawled across the couch while I started the movie, fast-forwarding through the opening credits.

When I perched on the edge of the sofa in front of him, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his chest. It wasn't exactly as comfortable as a sofa cushion would be, what with his chest being hard and cold—and perfect—as an ice sculpture, but it was definitely preferable. He pulled the old afghan off the back of the couch and draped it over me so I wouldn't freeze beside his body.

"You know, I've never had much patience with Romeo," he commented as the movie started.

"What's wrong with Romeo?" I asked, a little offended. Romeo was one of my favorite fictional characters. Until I'd met Edward, I'd sort of had a thing for him.

"Well, first of all, he's in love with this Rosaline—don't you think it makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his own happiness any more thoroughly?"

I sighed. "Do you want me to watch this alone?"

"No, I'll mostly be watching you, anyway." His fingers traced patterns across the skin of my arm, raising goose bumps. "Will you cry?"

"Probably," I admitted, "if I'm paying attention."

"I won't distract you then." But I felt his lips on my hair, and it was very distracting.

The movie eventually captured my interest, thanks in large part to Edward whispering Romeo's lines in my ear—his irresistible, velvet voice made the actor's voice sound weak and coarse by comparison.

And I did cry, to his amusement, when Juliet woke and found her new husband dead.

"I'll admit, I do sort of envy him here," Edward said, drying the tears with a lock of my hair.

"She's very pretty."

He made a disgusted sound. "I don't envy him the girl—just the ease of the suicide," he clarified in a teasing tone. "You humans have it so easy! All you have to do is throw down one tiny vial of plant extracts…"

"What?" I gasped.

"It's something I had to think about once, and I knew from Carlisle's experience that it wouldn't be simple. I'm not even sure how many ways Carlisle tried to kill himself in the beginning… after he realized what he'd become…" His voice, which had grown serious, turned light again. "And he's clearly still in excellent health."

I twisted around so that I could read his face. "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "What do you mean, this something you had to think about once?"

"Last spring, when you were… nearly killed…" He paused to take a deep breath, snuggling to return to his teasing tone. "Of course I was trying to focus on finding you alive, but part of my mind was making contingency plans. Like I said, it's not as easy for me as it is for a human."

For one second, the memory of my last trip to Phoenix washed through my head and made me feel dizzy.

I could see it all so clearly—the blinding sun, the heat waves coming off the concrete as I ran with desperate haste to find the sadistic vampire who wanted to torture me to death. James, waiting in the mirrored room with my mother as his hostage—or so I'd thought. I hadn't known it was all a ruse. Just as James hadn't known that Edward was racing to save me; Edward made it in time, but it had been a close one. Unthinkingly, my fingers traced the crescent-shaped scar on my hand that was always just a few degrees cooler than the rest of my skin.

I shook my head—as if I could shake away the bad memories—and tried to grasp what Edward meant.

My stomach plunged uncomfortably. "Contingency plans?" I repeated.

"Well, I wasn't going to live without you." He rolled his eyes as if that fact were childishly obvious.

"But I wasn't sure how to do it—I knew Emmett and Jasper would never help… so I was thinking maybe I would go to Italy and do something to provoke the Volturi."

I didn't want to believe he was serious, but his golden eyes were brooding, focused on something far away in the distance as he contemplated ways to end his own life. Abruptly, I was furious.

"What is a Volturi?" I demanded.

"The Volturi are a family," he explained, his eyes still remote. "A very old, very powerful family of our kind. They are the closest thing our world has to a royal family, I suppose. Carlisle lived with them briefly in his early years, in Italy, before he settled in America—do you remember the story?"

"Of course I remember." 

I would never forget the first time I'd gone to his home, the huge white mansion buried deep in the forest beside the river, or the room where Carlisle—Edward's father in so many real ways—kept a wall of paintings that illustrated his personal history. The most vivid, most wildly colorful canvas there, the largest, was from Carlisle's time in Italy. Of course I remembered the calm quartet of men, each with the exquisite face of a seraph, painted into the highest balcony overlooking the swirling mayhem of color.

Though the painting was centuries old, Carlisle—the blond angel—remained unchanged. And I remembered the three others, Carlisle's early acquaintances. Edward had never used the name Volturi for the beautiful trio, two black-haired, one snow white. He'd called them Aro, Caius, and Marcus, nighttime patrons of the arts…

"Anyway, you don't irritate the Volturi," Edward went on, interrupting ray reverie. "Not unless you want to die—or whatever it is we do." His voice was so calm, it made him sound almost bored by the prospect.

My anger turned to horror. I took his marble face between my hands and held it very tightly.

"You must never, never, never think of anything like that again!" I said. "No matter what might ever happen to me, you are not allowed to hurt yourself!"

"I'll never put you in danger again, so it's a moot point."

"Put me in danger! I thought we'd established that all the bad luck is my fault?" I was getting angrier.

"How dare you even think like that?" The idea of Edward ceasing to exist, even if I were dead, was impossibly painful.

"What would you do, if the situation were reversed?" he asked.

"That's not the same thing."

He didn't seem to understand the difference. He chuckled.

"What if something did happen to you?" I blanched at the thought. "Would you want me to go off myself?"

A trace of pain touched his perfect features.

"I guess I see your point… a little," he admitted. "But what would I do without you?"

"Whatever you were doing before I came along and complicated your existence."

He sighed. "You make that sound so easy."

"It should be. I'm not really that interesting."

He was about to argue, but then he let it go. "Moot point," he reminded me. Abruptly, he pulled himself up into a more formal posture, shifting me to the side so that we were no longer touching.

"Charlie?" I guessed.

Edward smiled. After a moment, I heard the sound of the police cruiser pulling into the driveway. I reached out and took his hand firmly. My dad could deal with that much.

Charlie came in with a pizza box in his hands.

"Hey, kids." He grinned at me. "I thought you'd like a break from cooking and washing dishes for your birthday. Hungry?"

"Sure. Thanks, Dad."

Charlie didn't comment on Edward's apparent lack of appetite. He was used to Edward passing on dinner.

"Do you mind if I borrow Beau for the evening?" Edward asked when Charlie and I were done.

I looked at Charlie hopefully. Maybe he had some concept of birthdays as stay-at-home, family affairs—this was my first birthday with him, the first birthday since my mom, Renee, had remarried and gone to live in Florida, so I didn't know what he would expect.

"That's fine—the Mariners are playing the Sox tonight," Charlie explained, and my hope disappeared.

"So I won't be any kind of company… Here." He scooped up the camera he'd gotten me on Renee's suggestion (because I would need pictures to fill up my scrap-book), and threw it to me.

He ought to know better than that—I'd always been coordinationally challenged. The camera glanced off the tip of my finger, and tumbled toward the floor. Edward snagged it before it could crash onto the linoleum.

"Nice save," Charlie noted. "If they're doing something fun at the Cullens' tonight, Beau, you should take some pictures. You know how your mother gets—she'll be wanting to see the pictures faster than you can take them."

"Good idea, Charlie," Edward said, handing me the camera.

I turned the camera on Edward, and snapped the first picture. "It works."

"That's good. Hey, say hi to Alice for me. She hasn't been over in a while." Charlie's mouth pulled down at one corner.

"It's been three days, Dad," I reminded him. Charlie was crazy about Alice. He'd become attached last spring when she'd helped me through my awkward convalescence; Charlie would be forever grateful to her for saving him from the horror of an almost-adult son who needed help showering.

"I'll tell her."

"Okay. You kids have fun tonight." It was clearly a dismissal. Charlie was already edging toward the living room and the TV.

Edward smiled, triumphant, and took my hand to pull me from the kitchen.

When we got to the truck, he opened the passenger door for me again, and this time I didn't argue. I still had a hard time finding the obscure turnoff to his house in the dark.

Edward drove north through Forks, visibly chafing at the speed limit enforced by my prehistoric Chevy.

The engine groaned even louder than usual as he pushed it over fifty.

"Take it easy," I warned him.

"You know what you would love? A nice little Audi coupe. Very quiet, lots of power…"

"There's nothing wrong with my truck. And speaking of expensive nonessentials, if you know what's good for you, you didn't spend any money on birthday presents."

"Not a dime," he said virtuously.

"Good."

"Can you do me a favor?"

"That depends on what it is."

He sighed, his lovely face serious. "Beau, the last real birthday any of us had was Emmett in 1935. Cut us a little slack, and don't be too difficult tonight. They're all very excited."

It always startled me a little when he brought up things like that. "Fine, I'll behave."

"I probably should warn you…"

"Please do."

"When I say they're all excited… I do mean all of them."

"Everyone?" I choked. "I thought Emmett and Rosalie were in Africa." The rest of Forks was under the impression that the older Cullens had gone off to college this year, to Dartmouth, but I knew better.

"Emmett wanted to be here."

"But… Rosalie?"

"I know, Beau. Don't worry, she'll be on her best behavior."

I didn't answer. Like I could just not worry, that easy. Unlike Alice, Edward's other "adopted" sister, the golden blond and exquisite Rosalie, didn't like me much. Actually, the feeling was a little bit stronger than just dislike. As far as Rosalie was concerned, I was an unwelcome intruder into her family's secret life.

I felt horribly guilty about the present situation, guessing that Rosalie and Emmett's prolonged absence was my fault, even as I furtively enjoyed not having to see her Emmett, Edward's playful bear of a brother, I did miss. He was in many ways just like the big brother I'd always wanted… only much, much more terrifying.

Edward decided to change the subject. "So, if you won't let me get you the Audi, isn't there anything that you'd like for your birthday?"

The words came out in a whisper. "You know what I want."

A deep frown carved creases into his marble forehead. He obviously wished he'd stuck to the subject of Rosalie.

It felt like we'd had this argument a lot today.

"Not tonight, Beau. Please."

"Well, maybe Alice will give me what I want."

Edward growled—a deep, menacing sound. "This isn't going to be your last birthday, Beau," he vowed.

"That's not fair!"

I thought I heard his teeth clench together.

We were pulling up to the house now. Bright light shined from every window on the first two floors. A long line of glowing Japanese lanterns hung from the porch eaves, reflecting a soft radiance on the huge cedars that surrounded the house. Big bowls of flowers—pink roses—lined the wide stairs up to the front doors.

I groaned.

Edward took a few deep breaths to calm himself. "This is a party," he reminded me. "Try to be a good sport."

"Sure," I muttered.

He came around to get my door, and offered me his hand.

"I have a question."

He waited warily.

"If I develop this film," I said, toying with the camera in my hands, "will you show up in the picture?"

Edward started laughing. He helped me out of the car, pulled me up the stairs, and was still laughing as he opened the door for me.

They were all waiting in the huge white living room; when I walked through the door, they greeted me with a loud chorus of "Happy birthday, Beau!" while I blushed and looked down. Alice, I assumed, had covered every flat surface with pink candles and dozens of crystal bowls filled with hundreds of roses.

There was a table with a white cloth draped over it next to Edward's grand piano, holding a blue birthday cake, more roses, a stack of glass plates, and a small pile of silver-wrapped presents.

It was a hundred times worse than I'd imagined.

Edward, sensing my distress, wrapped an encouraging arm around my waist and kissed the top of my head.

Edward's parents, Carlisle and Esme—impossibly youthful and lovely as ever—were the closest to the door. Esme hugged me carefully, her soft, caramel-colored hair brushing against my cheek as she kissed my forehead, and then Carlisle put his arm around my shoulders.

"Sorry about this, Beau," he stage-whispered. "We couldn't rein Alice in."

Rosalie and Emmett stood behind them. Rosalie didn't smile, but at least she didn't glare. Emmett's face was stretched into a huge grin. It had been months since I'd seen them; I'd forgotten how gloriously beautiful Rosalie was—it almost hurt to look at her. And had Emmett always been so… big?

"You haven't changed at all," Emmett said with mock disappointment. "I expected a perceptible difference, but here you are, red-faced just like always."

"Thanks a lot, Emmett," I said, blushing deeper.

He laughed, "I have to step out for a second"—he paused to wink conspicuously at Alice—"Don't do anything funny while I'm gone."

"I'll try."

Alice let go of Jasper's hand and skipped forward, all her teeth sparkling in the bright light. Jasper smiled too, but kept his distance. He leaned, long and blond, against the post at the foot of the stairs. During the days we'd had to spend cooped up together in Phoenix, I'd thought he'd gotten over his aversion to me. But he'd gone back to exactly how he'd acted before—avoiding me as much as possible—the moment he was free from that temporary obligation to protect me. I knew it wasn't personal, just a precaution, and I tried not to be overly sensitive about it. Jasper had more trouble sticking to the Cullens' diet than the rest of them; the scent of human blood was much harder for him to resist than the others—he hadn't been trying as long.

"Time to open presents," Alice declared. She put her cool hand under my elbow and towed me to the table with the cake and the shiny packages.

I put on my best martyr face. "Alice, I know I told you I didn't want anything—"

"But I didn't listen," she interrupted, smug. "Open it." She took the camera from my hands and replaced it with a big, square silver box.

The box was so light that it felt empty. The tag on top said that it was from Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper.

Self consciously, I tore the paper off and then stared at the box it concealed.

It was something electrical, with lots of numbers in the name. I opened the box, hoping for further illumination. But the box was empty.

"Um… thanks."

Rosalie actually cracked a smile. Jasper laughed. "It's a stereo for your truck," he explained. 

"Emmett's installing it right now so that you can't return it."

Alice was always one step ahead of me. "Thanks, Jasper, Rosalie," I told them, grinning as I remembered Edward's complaints about my radio this afternoon—all a setup, apparently. "Thanks, Emmett!" I called more loudly.

I heard his booming laugh from my truck, and I couldn't help laughing, too.

"Open mine and Edward's next," Alice said, so excited her voice was a high-pitched trill. She held a small, flat square in her hand.

I turned to give Edward a basilisk glare. "You promised."

Before he could answer, Emmett bounded through the door. "Just in time!" he crowed. He pushed in behind Jasper, who had also drifted closer than usual to get a good look.

"I didn't spend a dime," Edward assured me. He brushed a strand of hair from my face, leaving my skin tingling from his touch.

I inhaled deeply and turned to Alice. "Give it to me," I sighed.

Emmett chuckled with delight.

I took the little package, rolling my eyes at Edward while I stuck my finger under the edge of the paper and jerked it under the tape.

"Shoot," I muttered when the paper sliced my finger; I pulled it out to examine the damage. A single drop of blood oozed from the tiny cut.

It all happened very quickly then.

"No!" Edward roared.

He threw himself at me, flinging me back across the table. It fell, as I did, scattering the cake and the presents, the flowers and the plates. I landed in the mess of shattered crystal.

Jasper slammed into Edward, and the sound was like the crash of boulders in a rock slide.

There was another noise, a grisly snarling that seemed to be coming from deep in Jasper's chest. Jasper tried to shove past Edward, snapping his teeth just inches from Edward's face.

Emmett grabbed Jasper from behind in the next second, locking him into his massive steel grip, but Jasper struggled on, his wild, empty eyes focused only on me.

Beyond the shock, there was also pain. I'd tumbled down to the floor by the piano, with my arms thrown out instinctively to catch my fall, into the jagged shards of glass. Only now did I feel the searing, stinging pain that ran from my wrist to the crease inside my elbow.

Dazed and disoriented, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm—into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited.

Carlisle was not the only one who stayed calm. Centuries of experience in the emergency room were evident in his quiet, authoritative voice.

"Emmett, Rose, get Jasper outside."

Unsmiling for once, Emmett nodded. "Come on, Jasper."

Jasper struggled against Emmett's unbreakable grasp, twisting around, reaching toward his brother with his bared teeth, his eyes still past reason.

Edward's face was whiter than bone as he wheeled to crouch over me, taking a clearly defensive position. A low warning growl slid from between his clenched teeth. I could tell that he wasn't breathing.

Rosalie, her divine face strangely smug, stepped in front of Jasper—keeping a careful distance from his teeth—and helped Emmett wrestle him through the glass door that Esme held open, one hand pressed over her mouth and nose.

Esme's heart-shaped face was ashamed. "I'm so sorry, Beau," she cried as she followed the others into the yard.

"Let me by, Edward," Carlisle murmured.

A second passed, and then Edward nodded slowly and relaxed his stance.

Carlisle knelt beside me, leaning close to examine my arm. I could feel the shock frozen on my face, and I tried to compose it.

"Here, Carlisle," Alice said, handing him a towel.

He shook his head. "Too much glass in the wound." He reached over and ripped a long, thin scrap from the bottom of the white tablecloth. He twisted it around my arm above the elbow to form a tourniquet.

The smell of the blood was making me dizzy. My ears rang.

"Beau," Carlisle said softly. "Do you want me to drive you to the hospital, or would you like me to take care of it here?"

"Here, please," I whispered. If he took me to the hospital, there would be no way to keep this from Charlie.

"I'll get your bag," Alice said.

"Let's take her to the kitchen table," Carlisle said to Edward.

Edward lifted me effortlessly, while Carlisle kept the pressure steady on my arm.

"How are you doing, Beau?" Carlisle asked.

"I'm fine." My voice was reasonably steady, which pleased me.

Edward's face was like stone.

Alice was there. Carlisle's black bag was already on the table, a small but brilliant desk light plugged into the wall. Edward sat me gently into a chair, and Carlisle pulled up another. He went to work at once.

Edward stood over me, still protective, still not breathing.

"Just go, Edward," I sighed.

"I can handle it," he insisted. But his jaw was rigid; his eyes burned with the intensity of the thirst he fought, so much worse for him than it was for the others.

"You don't need to be a hero," I said. "Carlisle can fix me up without your help. Get some fresh air."

I winced as Carlisle did something to my arm that stung.

"I'll stay," he said.

"Why are you so masochistic?" I mumbled.

Carlisle decided to intercede. "Edward, you may as well go find Jasper before he gets too far. I'm sure he's upset with himself, and I doubt he'll listen to anyone but you right now."

"Yes," I eagerly agreed. "Go find Jasper."

"You might as well do something useful," Alice added.

Edward's eyes narrowed as we ganged up on him, but, finally, he nodded once and sprinted smoothly through the kitchen's back door. I was sure he hadn't taken a breath since I'd sliced my finger.

A numb, dead feeling was spreading through my arm.

Though it erased the sting, it reminded me of the gash, and I watched Carlisle's face carefully to distract me from what his hands were doing. His hair gleamed gold in the bright light as he bent over my arm. I could feel the faint stirrings of unease in the pit of my stomach, but I was determined not to let my usual squeamishness get the best of me. There was no pain now, just a gentle tugging sensation that I tried to ignore. No reason to get sick like a baby.

If she hadn't been in my line of sight, I wouldn't have noticed Alice give up and steal out of the room. With a tiny, apologetic smile on her lips, she disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

"Well, that's everyone," I sighed. "I can clear a room, at least."

"It's not your fault," Carlisle comforted me with a chuckle. "It could happen to anyone."

"Could" I repeated. "But it usually just happens to me."

He laughed again.

His relaxed calm was only more amazing set in direct contrast with everyone else's reaction. I couldn't find any trace of anxiety in his face. He worked with quick, sure movements. The only sound besides our quiet breathing was the soft plink, plink as the tiny fragments of glass dropped one by one to the table.

"How can you do this?" I demanded. "Even Alice and Esme…" I trailed off, shaking my head in wonder.

Though the rest of them had given up the traditional diet of vampires just as absolutely as Carlisle had, he was the only one who could bear the smell of my blood without suffering from the intense temptation.

Clearly, this was much more difficult than he made it seem.

"Years and years of practice," he told me. "I barely notice the scent anymore."

"Do you think it would be harder if you took a vacation from the hospital for a long time. And weren't around any blood?"

"Maybe." He shrugged his shoulders, but his hands remained steady. "I've never felt the need for an extended holiday." He flashed a brilliant smile in my direction. "I enjoy my work too much."

Plink, plink, plink. I was surprised at how much glass there seemed to be in my arm. I was tempted to glance at the growing pile, just to check the size, but I knew that idea would not be helpful to my no-vomiting strategy.

"What is it that you enjoy?" I wondered. It didn't make sense to me—the years of struggle and self-denial he must have spent to get to the point where he could endure this so easily. Besides, I wanted to keep him talking; the conversation kept my mind off the queasy feeling in my stomach.

His dark eyes were calm and thoughtful as he answered. "Hmm. What I enjoy the very most is when my… enhanced abilities let me save someone who would otherwise have been lost. It's pleasant knowing that, thanks to what I can do, some people's lives are better because I exist. Even the sense of smell is a useful diagnostic tool at times." 

One side of his mouth pulled up in half a smile.

I mulled that over while he poked around, making sure all the glass splinters were gone. Then he rummaged in his bag for new tools, and I tried not to picture a needle and thread.

"You try very hard to make up for something that was never your fault," I suggested while a new kind of tugging started at the edges of my skin. 

"What I mean is, it's not like you asked for this. You didn't choose this kind of life, and yet you have to work so hard to be good."

"I don't know that I'm making up for anything," he disagreed lightly. "Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given."

"That makes it sound too easy."

He examined my arm again. "There," he said, snipping a thread.

"All done." He wiped an oversized Q-tip, dripping with some syrup-colored liquid, thoroughly across the operation site. The smell was strange; it made my head spin. The syrup stained my skin.

"In the beginning, though," I pressed while he taped another long piece of gauze securely in place, sealing it to my skin. 

"Why did you even think to try a different way than the obvious one?"

His lips turned up in a private smile. "Hasn't Edward told you this story?"

"Yes. But I'm trying to understand what you were thinking…"

His face was suddenly serious again, and I wondered if his thoughts had gone to the same place that mine had. Wondering what I would be thinking when—I refused to think if—it was me.

"You know my father was a clergyman," he mused as he cleaned the table carefully, rubbing everything down with wet gauze, and then doing it again. The smell of alcohol burned in my nose. 

"He had a rather harsh view of the world, which I was already beginning to question before the time that I changed."

Carlisle put all the dirty gauze and the glass slivers into an empty crystal bowl. I didn't understand what he was doing, even when he lit the match. Then he threw it onto the alcohol-soaked fibers, and the sudden blaze made me jump.

"Sorry," he apologized. "That ought to do it… So I didn't agree with my father's particular brand of faith. But never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other. Not even the reflection in the mirror."

I pretended to examine the dressing on my arm to hide my surprise at the direction our conversation had taken. Religion was the last thing I expected, all things considered. My own life was fairly devoid of belief. Charlie considered himself a Lutheran, because that's what his parents had been, but Sunday's he worshipped by the river with a fishing pole in his hand. Renee tried out a church now and then, but, much like her brief affairs with tennis, pottery, yoga, and French classes, she moved on by the time I was aware of her newest fad.

"I'm sure all this sounds a little bizarre, coming from a vampire." He grinned, knowing how their casual use of that word never failed to shock me. 

"But I'm hoping that there is still a point to this life, even for us. It's a long shot, I'll admit," he continued in an offhand voice. "By all accounts, we're damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we'll get some measure of credit for trying."

"I don't think that's foolish," I mumbled. I couldn't imagine anyone, deity included, who wouldn't be impressed by Carlisle. Besides, the only kind of heaven I could appreciate would have to include Edward. 

"And I don't think anyone else would, either."

"Actually, you're the very first one to agree with me."

"The rest of them don't feel the same?" I asked, surprised, thinking of only one person in particular. Carlisle guessed the direction of my thoughts again. 

"Edward's with me up to a point. God and heaven exist… and so does hell. But he doesn't believe there is an afterlife for our kind." Carlisle's voice was very soft; he stared out the big window over the sink, into the darkness. 

"You see, he thinks we've lost our souls."

I immediately thought of Edward's words this afternoon: unless you want to die—or whatever it is that we do. The lightbulb flicked on over my head.

"That's the real problem, isn't it?" I guessed. "That's why he's being so difficult about me."

Carlisle spoke slowly. "I look at my… son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him—and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward?"

I nodded in fervent agreement.

"But if I believed as he does…" He looked down at me with unfathomable eyes. "If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul?"

The way he phrased the question thwarted my answer.

If he'd asked me whether I would risk my soul for Edward, the reply would be obvious. But would I risk Edward's soul? I pursed my lips unhappily. That wasn't a fair exchange.

"You see the problem."

I shook my head, aware of the stubborn set of my chin.

Carlisle sighed.

"It's my choice," I insisted.

"It's his, too." He held up his hand when he could see that I was about to argue. "Whether he is responsible for doing that to you."

"He's not the only one able to do it." I eyed Carlisle speculatively.

He laughed, abruptly lightening the mood. "Oh, no! You're going to have to work this out with him." But then he sighed. "That's the one part I can never be sure of. I think, in most other ways, that I've done the best I could with what I had to work with. But was it right to doom the others to this life? I can't decide."

I didn't answer. I imagined what my life would be like if Carlisle had resisted the temptation to change his lonely existence… and shuddered.

"It was Edward's mother who made up my mind." Carlisle's voice was almost a whisper. He stared unseeingly out the black windows.

"His mother?" Whenever I'd asked Edward about his parents, he would merely say that they had died long ago, and his memories were vague. I realized Carlisle's memory of them, despite the brevity of their contact, would be perfectly clear.

"Yes. Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masen. His father, Edward Senior, never regained consciousness in the hospital. He died in the first wave of the influenza. But Elizabeth was alert until almost the very end. Edward looks a great deal like her—she had that same strange bronze shade to her hair, and her eyes were exactly the same color green."

"His eyes were green?" I murmured, trying to picture it.

"Yes…" Carlisle's ocher eyes were a hundred years away now. "Elizabeth worried obsessively over her son. She hurt her own chances of survival trying to nurse him from her sickbed. I expected that he would go first, he was so much worse off than she was. When the end came for her, it was very quick. It was just after sunset, and I'd arrived to relieve the doctors who'd been working all day. That was a hard time to pretend—there was so much work to be done, and I had no need of rest. How I hated to go back to my house, to hide in the dark and pretend to sleep while so many were dying.

"I went to check Elizabeth and her son first. I'd grown attached—always a dangerous thing to do considering the fragile nature of humans. I could see at once that she'd taken a bad turn. The fever was raging out of control, and her body was too weak to fight anymore.”

"She didn't look weak, though, when she glared up at me from her cot. "Save him!' she commanded me in the hoarse voice that was all her throat could manage.

"I'll do everything in my power,' I promised her, taking her hand. The fever was so high, she probably couldn't even tell how unnaturally cold mine felt. Everything felt cold to her skin.

"You must," she insisted, clutching at my hand with enough strength that I wondered if she wouldn't pull through the crisis after all. Her eyes were hard, like stones, like emeralds. 'You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward."

"It frightened me. She looked at me with those piercing eyes, and, for one instant, I felt certain that she knew my secret. Then the fever overwhelmed her, and she never regained consciousness. She died within an hour of making her demand.

"I'd spent decades considering the idea of creating a companion for myself. Just one other creature who could really know me, rather than what I pretended to be. But I could never justify it to myself—doing what had been done to me.

"There Edward lay, dying. It was clear that he had only hours left. Beside him, his mother, her face somehow not yet peaceful, not even in death."

Carlisle saw it all again, his memory unblurred by the intervening century. I could see it clearly, too, as he spoke—the despair of the hospital, the overwhelming atmosphere of death. Edward burning with fever, his life slipping away with each tick of the clock… I shuddered again, and forced the picture from my mind.

"Elizabeth's words echoed in my head. How could she guess what I could do? Could anyone really want that for her son?

"I looked at Edward. Sick as he was, he was still beautiful. There was something pure and good about his face. The kind of face I would have wanted my son to have.

"After all those years of indecision, I simply acted on a whim. I wheeled his mother to the morgue first, and then I came back for him. No one noticed that he was still breathing. There weren't enough hands, enough eyes, to keep track of half of what the patients needed. The morgue was empty—of the living, at least. I stole him out the back door, and carried him across the rooftops back to my home.

"I wasn't sure what had to be done. I settled for recreating the wounds I'd received myself, so many centuries earlier in London. I felt bad about that later. It was more painful and lingering than necessary.

"I wasn't sorry, though. I've never been sorry that I saved Edward." He shook his head, coming back to the present. He smiled at me.

"I suppose I should take you home now."

"I'll do that," Edward said. He came through the shadowy dining room, walking slowly for him. His face was smooth, unreadable, but there was something wrong with his eyes—something he was trying very hard to hide. 

I felt a spasm of unease in my stomach.

"Carlisle can take me," I said. I looked down at my shirt; the light blue cotton was soaked and spotted with my blood. My right shoulder was covered in thick blue frosting.

"I'm fine." Edward's voice was unemotional. "You'll need to change anyway. You'd give Charlie a heart attack the way you look. I'll have Alice get you something." He strode out the kitchen door again.

I looked at Carlisle anxiously. "He's very upset."

"Yes," Carlisle agreed. "Tonight is exactly the kind of thing that he fears the most. You being put in danger, because of what we are."

"It's not his fault."

"It's not yours, either."

I looked away from his wise, beautiful eyes. I couldn't agree with that.

Carlisle offered me his hand and helped me up from the table. I followed him out into the main room. Esme had come back; she was mopping the floor where I'd fallen—with straight bleach from the smell of it.

"Esme, let me do that." I could feel that my face was bright red again.

"I'm already done." She smiled up at me. "How do you feel?"

"I'm fine," I assured her. "Carlisle sews faster than any other doctor I've had."

They both chuckled.

Alice and Edward came in the back doors. Alice hurried to my side, but Edward hung back, his face indecipherable.

"C'mon," Alice said. "I'll get you something less macabre to wear."

She found me a shirt of Jasper’s that was close to the same color mine had been. Charlie wouldn't notice, I was sure. The long white bandage on my arm didn't look nearly as serious when I was no longer spattered in gore. Charlie was never surprised to see me bandaged.

"Alice," I whispered as she headed back to the door.

"Yes?" She kept her voice low, too, and looked at me curiously, her head cocked to the side.

"How bad is it?" I couldn't be sure if my whispering was a wasted effort. Even though we were upstairs, with the door closed, perhaps he could hear me.

Her face tensed. "I'm not sure yet."

"How's Jasper?"

She sighed. "He's very unhappy with himself. It's all so much more of a challenge for him, and he hates feeling weak."

"It's not his fault. You'll tell him that I'm not mad at him, not at all, won't you?" 

"Of course."

Edward was waiting for me by the front door. As I got to the bottom of the staircase, he held it open without a word.

"Take your things!" Alice cried as I walked warily toward Edward. She scooped up the two packages, one half-opened, and my camera from under the piano, and pressed them into my good arm.

"You can thank me later, when you've opened them." Esme and Carlisle both said a quiet goodnight. I could see them stealing quick glances at their impassive son, much like I was.

It was a relief to be outside; I hurried past the lanterns and the roses, now unwelcome reminders. Edward kept pace with me silently. He opened the passenger side for me, and I climbed in without complaint.

On the dashboard was a big red ribbon, stuck to the new stereo. I pulled it off, throwing it to the floor. As Edward slid into the other side, I kicked the ribbon under my seat.

He didn't look at me or the stereo. Neither of us switched it on, and the silence was somehow intensified by the sudden thunder of the engine. He drove too fast down the dark, serpentine lane.

The silence was making me insane.

"Say something," I finally begged as he turned onto the freeway.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked in a detached voice.

I cringed at his remoteness. 'Tell me you forgive me."

That brought a flicker of life to his face—a flicker of anger. "Forgive you? For what?"

"If I'd been more careful, nothing would have happened."

"Beau, you gave yourself a paper cut—that hardly deserves the death penalty."

"It's still my fault."

My words opened up the floodgate.

"Your fault? If you'd cut yourself at Mike Newton's house, with Jessica there and Angela and your other normal friends, the worst that could possibly have happened would be what? Maybe they couldn't find you a bandage? If you'd tripped and knocked over a pile of glass plates on your own—without someone throwing you into them—even then, what's the worst? You'd get blood on the seats when they drove you to the emergency room? Mike Newton could have held your hand while they stitched you up—and he wouldn't be fighting the urge to kill you the whole time he was there. Don't try to take any of this on yourself, Beau. It will only make me more disgusted with myself."

"How the hell did Mike Newton end up in this conversation?" I demanded.

"Mike Newton ended up in this conversation because Mike Newton would be a hell of a lot healthier for you to be with," he growled.

"I'd rather die than be with Mike Newton," I protested. "I'd rather die than be with anyone but you."

"Don't be melodramatic, please."

"Well then, don't you be ridiculous."

He didn't answer. He glared through the windshield, his expression black.

I racked my brain for some way to salvage the evening. When we pulled up in front of my house, I still hadn't come up with anything.

He killed the engine, but his hands stayed clenched around the steering wheel.

"Will you stay tonight?" I asked.

"I should go home."

The last thing I wanted was for him to go wallow in remorse.

"For my birthday," I pressed.

"You can't have it both ways—either you want people to ignore your birthday or you don't. One or the other."

His voice was stern, but not as serious as before. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

"Okay. I've decided that I don't want you to ignore my birthday. I'll see you upstairs."

I hopped out, reaching back in for my packages. He frowned.

"You don't have to take those."

"I want them," I responded automatically, and then wondered if he was using reverse psychology.

"No, you don't. Carlisle and Esme spent money on you."

"I'll live." I tucked the presents awkwardly under my good arm and slammed the door behind me. He was out of the truck and by my side in less than a second.

"Let me carry them, at least." he said as he took them away. "I'll be in your room."

I smiled. "Thanks."

"Happy birthday," he sighed, and leaned down to touch his lips to mine.

I reached up on my toes to make the kiss last longer when he pulled away. He smiled my favorite crooked smile, and then he disappeared into the darkness.

The game was still on; as soon as I walked through the front door I could hear the announcer rambling over the babble of the crowd.

"Beau?" Charlie called.

"Hey, Dad," I said as I came around the corner. I held my arm close to my side. The slight pressure burned, and I wrinkled my nose. The anesthetic was apparently losing its effectiveness.

"How was it?" Charlie lounged across the sofa with his bare feet propped up on the arm. What was left of his curly brown hair was crushed flat on one side.

"Alice went overboard. Flowers, cake, candles, presents—the whole bit."

"What did they get you?"

"A stereo for my truck." And various unknowns.

"Wow."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Well, I'm calling it a night."

"I'll see you in the morning."

I waved. "See ya."

"What happened to your arm?"

I flushed and cursed silently. "I tripped. It's nothing."

"Beau," he sighed, shaking his head.

"Goodnight, Dad."

I hurried up to the bathroom, where I kept my pajamas for just such nights as these. I shrugged into the matching tank top and cotton pants that I'd gotten to replace the holey sweats I used to wear to bed, wincing as the movement pulled at the stitches. I washed my face one-handed, brushed my teeth, and then skipped to my room.

He was sitting in the center of my bed, toying idly with one of the silver boxes.

"Hi," he said. His voice was sad. He was wallowing.

I went to the bed, pushed the presents out of his hands, and climbed into his lap.

"Hi." I snuggled into his stone chest. "Can I open my presents now?"

"Where did the enthusiasm come from?" he wondered.

"You made me curious."

I picked up the long flat rectangle that must have been from Carlisle and Esme.

"Allow me," he suggested. He took the gift from my hand and tore the silver paper off with one fluid movement. He handed the rectangular white box back to me.

"Are you sure I can handle lifting the lid?" I muttered, but he ignored me.

Inside the box was a long thick piece of paper with an overwhelming amount of fine print. It took me a minute to get the gist of the information.

"We're going to Jacksonville?" And I was excited, in spite of myself. It was a voucher for plane tickets for both me and Edward.

"That's the idea."

"I can't believe it. Renee is going to flip! You don't mind, though, do you? It's sunny, you'll have to stay inside all day."

"I think I can handle it," he said, and then frowned. "If I'd had any idea that you could respond to a gift this appropriately, I would have made you open it in front of Carlisle and Esme. I thought you'd complain."

"Well, of course it's too much. But I get to take you with me!"

He chuckled. "Now I wish I'd spent money on your present. I didn't realize that you were capable of being reasonable."

I set the tickets aside and reached for his present, my curiosity rekindled. He took it from me and unwrapped it like the first one.

He handed back a clear CD jewel case, with a blank silver CD inside.

"What is it?" I asked, perplexed.

He didn't say anything; he took the CD and reached around me to put it in the CD player on the bedside table. He hit play, and we waited in silence. Then the music began.

I listened, speechless and wide-eyed. I knew he was waiting for my reaction, but I couldn't talk. Tears welled up, and I reached up to wipe them away before they could spill over.

"Does your arm hurt?" he asked anxiously.

"No, it's not my arm. It's beautiful, Edward. You couldn't have given me anything I would love more. I can't believe it." I shut up, so I could listen.

It was his music, his compositions. The first piece on the CD was my lullaby.

"I didn't think you would let me get a piano so I could play for you here," he explained.

"You're right."

"How does your arm feel?"

"Just fine." Actually, it was starting to blaze under the bandage. I wanted ice. I would have settled for his hand, but that would have given me away.

"I'll get you some Tylenol."

"I don't need anything," I protested, but he slid me off his lap and headed for the door.

"Charlie," I hissed. Charlie wasn't exactly aware that Edward frequently stayed over. In fact, he would have a stroke if that fact were brought to his attention. But I didn't feel too guilty for deceiving him. It wasn't as if we were up to anything he wouldn't want me to be up to. Edward and his rules…

"He won't catch me," Edward promised as he disappeared silently out the door . . and returned, catching the door before it had swung back to touch the frame. He had the glass from the bathroom and the bottle of pills in one hand.

I took the pills he handed me without arguing—I knew I would lose the argument And my arm really was starting to bother me.

My lullaby continued, soft and lovely, in the background.

"It's late," Edward noted. He scooped me up off the bed with one arm, and pulled the cover back with the other. He put me down with my head on my pillow and tucked the quilt around me. He lay down next to me—on top of the blanket so I wouldn't get chilled—and put his arm over me.

I leaned my head against his shoulder and sighed happily.

"Thanks again," I whispered.

"You're welcome."

It was quiet for a long moment as I listened to my lullaby drift to a close. Another song began. I recognized Esme's favorite.

"What are you thinking about?'" I wondered in a whisper.

He hesitated for a second before he told me. "I was thinking about right and wrong, actually."

I felt a chill tingle along my spine.

"Remember how I decided that I wanted you to not ignore my birthday?" I asked quickly, hoping it wasn't too clear that I was trying to distract him.

"Yes," he agreed, wary.

"Well, I was thinking, since it's still my birthday, that I'd like you to kiss me again."

"You're greedy tonight."

"Yes, I am—but please, don't do anything you don't want to do," I added, piqued.

He laughed, and then sighed. "Heaven forbid that I should do anything I don't want to do," he said in a strangely desperate tone as he put his hand under my chin and pulled my face up to his.

The kiss began much the same as usual—Edward was as careful as ever, and my heart began to overreact like it always did. And then something seemed to change. Suddenly his lips became much more urgent, his free hand twisted into my hair and held my face securely to his. And, though my hands tangled in his hair, too, and though I was clearly beginning to cross his cautious lines, for once he didn't stop me.

His body was cold through the thin quilt, but I crushed myself against him eagerly.

When he stopped it was abrupt; he pushed me away with gentle, firm hands.

I collapsed back onto my pillow, gasping, my head spinning. Something tugged at my memory, elusive, on the edges.

"Sorry," he said, and he was breathless, too. "That was out of line."

"I don't mind," I panted.

He frowned at me in the darkness. "Try to sleep. Beau.

"No, I want you to kiss me again."

"You're overestimating my self-control."

"Which is tempting you more, my blood or my body?" I challenged.

"It's a tie." He grinned briefly in spite of himself, and then was serious again. "Now. why don't you stop pushing your luck and go to sleep?"

"Fine," I agreed, snuggling closer to him. I really did feel exhausted. It had been a long day in so many ways, yet I felt no sense of relief at its end. Almost as if something worse was coming tomorrow. It was a silly premonition—what could be worse than today?' Just the shock catching up with me, no doubt.

Trying to be sneaky about it, I pressed my injured arm against his shoulder, so his cool skin would sooth the burning. It felt better at once.

I was halfway asleep, maybe more, when I realized what his kiss had reminded me of: last spring, when he'd had to leave me to throw James off my trail, Edward had kissed me goodbye, not knowing when—or if—we would see each other again. This kiss had the same almost painful edge for some reason I couldn't imagine. I shuddered into unconsciousness, as if I were already having a nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited.

I felt absolutely hideous in the morning. I hadn’t slept well; my arm burned and my head ached. It didn't help my outlook that Edward's face was smooth and remote as he kissed my forehead quickly and ducked out my window. I was afraid of the time I'd spent unconscious, afraid that he might have been thinking about right and wrong again while he watched me sleep. The anxiety seemed to ratchet up the intensity of the pounding in my head.

Edward was waiting for me at school, as usual, but his face was still wrong. There was something buried in his eyes that I couldn't be sure of—and it scared me. I didn't want to bring up last night, but I wasn't sure if avoiding the subject would be worse.

He opened my door for me.

"How do you feel?"

"Perfect," I lied, cringing as the sound of the slamming door echoed in my head.

We walked in silence, he shortening his stride to match mine. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but most of those questions would have to wait, because they were for Alice: How was Jasper this morning? What had they said when I was gone? What had Rosalie said? And most importantly, what could she see happening now in her strange, imperfect visions of the future? Could she guess what Edward was thinking, why he was so gloomy? Was there a foundation for the tenuous, instinctive fears that I couldn't seem to shake?

The morning passed slowly. I was impatient to see Alice, though I wouldn't be able to really talk to her with Edward there. Edward remained aloof. Occasionally he would ask about my arm, and I would lie.

Alice usually beat us to lunch; she didn't have to keep pace with a sloth like me. But she wasn't at the table, waiting with a tray of food she wouldn't eat.

Edward didn't say anything about her absence. I wondered to myself if her class was running late—until I saw Conner and Ben, who were in her fourth hour French class.

"Where's Alice?" I asked Edward anxiously.

He looked at the granola bar he was slowly pulverizing between his fingertips while he answered. 

"She's with Jasper."

"Is he okay?"

"He's gone away for a while."

"What? Where?"

Edward shrugged. "Nowhere in particular."

"And Alice, too," I said with quiet desperation. Of course, if Jasper needed her, she would go.

"Yes. She'll be gone for a while. She was trying to convince him to go to Denali."

Denali was where the one other band of unique vampires—good ones like the Cullens—lived. Tanya and her family. I'd heard of them now and again. Edward had run to them last winter when my arrival had made Forks difficult for him. Laurent, the most civilized member of James's little coven, had gone there rather than siding with James against the Cullens. It made sense for Alice to encourage Jasper to go there.

I swallowed, trying to dislodge the sudden lump in my throat. The guilt made my head bow and my shoulders slump. I'd run them out of their home, just like Rosalie and Emmett. I was a plague.

"Is your arm bothering you?" he asked solicitously.

"Who cares about my stupid arm?" I muttered in disgust.

He didn't answer, and I put my head down on the table.

By the end of the day, the silence was becoming ridiculous. I didn't want to be the one to break it, but apparently that was my only choice if I ever wanted him to talk to me again.

"You'll come over later tonight?" I asked as he walked me—silently—to my truck. He always came over.

"Later?"

It pleased me that he seemed surprised. "I have to work. I had to trade with Mrs. Newton to get yesterday off."

"Oh," he murmured.

"So you'll come over when I'm home, though, right?" I hated that I felt suddenly unsure about this.

"If you want me to."

"I always want you," I reminded him, with perhaps a little more intensity than the conversation required.

I expected he would laugh, or smile, or react somehow to my words.

"All right, then," he said indifferently.

He kissed my forehead again before he shut the door on me. Then he turned his back and loped gracefully toward his car.

I was able to drive out of the parking lot before the panic really hit, but I was hyperventilating by the time I got to Newton's.

He just needed time, I told myself. He would get over this. Maybe he was sad because his family was disappearing. But Alice and Jasper would come back soon, and Rosalie and Emmett, too. If it would help, I would stay away from the big white house on the river—I'd never set foot there again. That didn't matter. I'd still see Alice at school. She would have to come back for school, right? And she was at my place all the time anyway. She wouldn't want to hurt Charlie's feelings by staying away.

No doubt I would also run into Carlisle with regularity—in the emergency room.

After all, what had happened last night was nothing. Nothing had happened. So I fell down—that was the story of my life. Compared to last spring, it seemed especially unimportant. James had left me broken and nearly dead from loss of blood—and yet Edward had handled the interminable weeks in the hospital much better than this. Was it because, this time, it wasn't an enemy he'd had to protect me from?

Because it was his brother?

Maybe it would be better if he took me away, rather than his family being scattered. I grew slightly less depressed as I considered all the uninterrupted alone time. If he could just last through the school year, Charlie wouldn't be able to object. We could go away to college, or pretend that's what we were doing, like Rosalie and Emmett this year. Surely Edward could wait a year. What was a year to an immortal? It didn't even seem like that much to me.

I was able to talk myself into enough composure to handle getting out of the truck and walking to the store. Mike Newton had beaten me here today, and he smiled and waved when I came in. I grabbed my vest, nodding vaguely in his direction. I was still imagining pleasant scenarios that consisted of me running away with Edward to various exotic locales.

Mike interrupted my fantasy. "How was your birthday?"

"Ugh," I mumbled. "I'm glad it's over."

Mike looked at me from the corners of his eyes like I was crazy.

Work dragged. I wanted to see Edward again, praying that he would be past the worst of this, whatever it was exactly, by the time I saw him again. It's nothing, I told myself over and over again. Everything will go back to normal.

The relief I felt when I turned onto my street and saw Edward's silver car parked in front of my house was an overwhelming, heady thing. And it bothered me deeply that it should be that way.

I hurried through the front door, calling out before I was completely inside.

"Dad? Edward?"

As I spoke, I could hear the distinctive theme music from ESPN's SportsCenter coming from the living room.

"In here," Charlie called.

I hung my raincoat on its peg and hurried around the corner.

Edward was in the armchair, my father on the sofa. Both had their eyes trained on the TV. The focus was normal for my father. Not so much for Edward.

"Hi," I said weakly.

"Hey, Beau," my father answered, eyes never moving. "We just had cold pizza. I think it's still on the table."

"Okay."

I waited in the doorway. Finally, Edward looked over at me with a polite smile. "I'll be right behind you,” he promised. His eyes strayed back to the TV.

I stared for another minute, shocked. Neither one seemed to notice. I could feel something, panic maybe, building up in my chest. I escaped to the kitchen.

The pizza held no interest for me. I sat in my chair, pulled my knees up, and wrapped my arms around them. Something was very wrong, maybe more wrong than I'd realized. The sounds of male bonding and banter continued from the TV set.

I tried to get control of myself, to reason with myself.

What's the worst that can happen? I flinched. That was definitely the wrong question to ask. I was having a hard time breathing right.

Okay, I thought again, what's the worst I can live through? I didn't like that question so much, either. But I thought through the possibilities I'd considered today.

Staying away from Edward's family. Of course, he wouldn't expect Alice to be part of that. But if Jasper was off limits, that would lessen the time I could have with her. I nodded to myself—I could live with that.

Or going away. Maybe he wouldn't want to wait till the end of the school year, maybe it would have to be now.

In front of me, on the table, my presents from Charlie and Renee were where I had left them, the camera I hadn't had the chance to use at the Cullens' sitting beside the album. I touched the pretty cover of the scrapbook my mother had given me, and sighed, thinking of Renee. Somehow, living without her for as long as I had did not make the idea of a more permanent separation easier. And Charlie would be left all alone here, abandoned. They would both be so hurt…

But we'd come back, right? We'd visit, of course, wouldn't we?

I couldn't be certain about the answer to that.

I leaned my cheek against my knee, staring at the physical tokens of my parents' love. I'd known this path I'd chosen was going to be hard. And, after all, I was thinking about the worst-case scenario—the very worst I could live through.

I touched the scrapbook again, flipping the front cover over. Little metal corners were already in place to hold the first picture. It wasn't a half-bad idea, to make some record of my life here. I felt a strange urge to get started. Maybe I didn't have that long left in Forks.

I toyed with the wrist strap on the camera, wondering about the first picture on the roll. Could it possibly turn out anything close to the original? I doubted it. But he didn't seem worried that it would be blank. I chuckled to myself, thinking of his carefree laughter last night. The chuckle died away. So much had changed, and so abruptly. It made me feel a little bit dizzy, like I was standing on an edge, a precipice somewhere much too high.

I didn't want to think about that anymore. I grabbed the camera and headed up the stairs.

My room hadn't really changed all that much in the seventeen years since my mother had been here. The walls were still light blue, the same yellowed curtains hung in front of the window. There was a bed, rather than a crib, but she would recognize the quilt draped untidily over the top—it had been a gift from Gran.

Regardless, I snapped a picture of my room. There wasn't much else I could do tonight—it was too dark outside—and the feeling was growing stronger, it was almost a compulsion now. I would record everything about Forks before I had to leave it.

Change was coming. I could feel it. It wasn't a pleasant prospect, not when life was perfect the way it was.

I took my time coming back down the stairs, camera in hand, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach as I thought of the strange distance I didn't want to see in Edward's eyes. He would get over this. Probably he was worried that I would be upset when he asked me to leave. I would let him work through it without meddling. And I would be prepared when he asked.

I had the camera ready as I leaned around the corner, being sneaky. I was sure there was no chance that I had caught Edward by surprise, but he didn't look up. I felt a brief shiver as something icy twisted in my stomach; I ignored that and took the picture.

They both looked at me then. Charlie frowned. Edward's face was empty, expressionless.

"What are you doing, Beau?" Charlie complained.

"Oh, come on." I pretended to smile as I went to sit on the floor in front of the sofa where Charlie lounged. 

"You know Mom will be calling soon to ask if I'm using my presents. I have to get to work before she can get her feelings hurt."

"Why are you taking pictures of me, though?" he grumbled.

"Because you're so handsome," I replied, keeping it light. "And because, since you bought the camera, you're obligated to be one of my subjects."

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"Hey, Edward," I said with admirable indifference. "Take one of me and my dad together."

I threw the camera toward him, carefully avoiding his eyes, and knelt beside the arm of the sofa where Charlie's face was. Charlie sighed.

"You need to smile, Beau," Edward murmured.

I did my best, and the camera flashed.

"Let me take one of you kids," Charlie suggested. I knew he was just trying to shift the camera's focus from himself.

Edward stood and lightly tossed him the camera.

I went to stand beside Edward, and the arrangement felt formal and strange to me. He put one hand lightly on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm more securely around his waist. I wanted to look at his face, but I was afraid to.

"Smile, Beau," Charlie reminded me again.

I took a deep breath and smiled. The flash blinded me.

"Enough pictures for tonight," Charlie said then, shoving the camera into a crevice of the sofa cushions and rolling over it. "You don't have to use the whole roll now."

Edward dropped his hand from my shoulder and twisted casually out of my arm. He sat back down in the armchair.

I hesitated, and then went to sit against the sofa again. I was suddenly so frightened that my hands were shaking. I pressed them into my stomach to hide them, put my chin on my knees and stared at the TV screen in front of me, seeing nothing.

When the show ended, I hadn't moved an inch. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Edward stand.

"I'd better get home," he said.

Charlie didn't look up from the commercial. "See ya."

I got awkwardly to my feet—I was stiff from sitting so still—and followed Edward out the front door. He went straight to his car.

"Will you stay?" I asked, no hope in my voice.

I expected his answer, so it didn't hurt as much.

"Not tonight."

I didn't ask for a reason.

He got in his car and drove away while I stood there, unmoving. I barely noticed that it was raining. I waited, without knowing what I waited for, until the door opened behind me.

"Beau, what are you doing?" Charlie asked, surprised to see me standing there alone and dripping.

"Nothing." I turned and trudged back to the house.

It was a long night, with little in the way of rest.

I got up as soon as there was a faint light outside my window. I dressed for school mechanically, waiting for the clouds to brighten. When I had eaten a bowl of cereal, I decided that it was light enough for pictures. I took one of my truck, and then the front of the house. I turned and snapped a few of the forest by Charlie's house. Funny how it didn't seem sinister like it used to. I realized I would miss this—the green, the timelessness, the mystery of the woods. All of it.

I put the camera in my school bag before I left. I tried to concentrate on my new project rather than the fact that Edward apparently hadn't gotten over things during the night.

Along with the fear, I was beginning to feel impatience. How long could this last?

It lasted through the morning. He walked silently beside me, never seeming to actually look at me. I tried to concentrate on my classes, but not even English could hold my attention. Mr. Berty had to repeat his question about Lady Capulet twice before I realized he was talking to me. Edward whispered the correct answer under his breath and then went back to ignoring me.

At lunch, the silence continued. I felt like I was going to start screaming at any moment, so, to distract myself, I leaned across the table's invisible line and spoke to Jessica.

"Hey, Jess?"

"What's up, Beau?"

"Could you do me a favor?" I asked, reaching into my bag. "My mom wants me to get some pictures of my friends for a scrapbook. So, take some pictures of everybody, okay?"

I handed her the camera.

"Sure," she said, grinning, and turned to snap a candid shot of Mike with his mouth full.

A predictable picture war ensued. I watched them hand the camera around the table, giggling and flirting and complaining about being on film. It seemed strangely childish. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for normal human behavior today.

"Uh-oh," Jessica said apologetically as she returned the camera. "I think we used all your film."

"That's okay. I think I already got pictures of everything else I needed."

After school, Edward walked me back to the parking lot in silence. I had to work again, and for once, I was glad. Time with me obviously wasn't helping things. Maybe time alone would be better.

I dropped my film off at the Thriftway on my way to Newton's, and then picked up the developed pictures after work. At home, I said a brief hi to Charlie, grabbed a granola bar from the kitchen, and hurried up to my room with the envelope of photographs tucked under my arm.

I sat in the middle of my bed and opened the envelope with wary curiosity. Ridiculously, I still half expected the first print to be a blank.

When I pulled it out, I gasped aloud. Edward looked just as beautiful as he did in real life, staring at me out of the picture with the warm eyes I'd missed for the past few days. It was almost uncanny that anyone could look so… so… beyond description. No thousand words could equal this picture.

I flipped through the rest of the stack quickly once, and then laid three of them out on the bed side by side.

The first was the picture of Edward in the kitchen, his warm eyes touched with tolerant amusement. 

The second was Edward and Charlie, watching ESPN. The difference in Edward's expression was severe.

His eyes were careful here, reserved. Still breathtakingly beautiful, but his face was colder, more like a sculpture, less alive.

The last was the picture of Edward and me standing awkwardly side by side. Edward's face was the same as the last, cold and statue-like. But that wasn't the most troubling part of this photograph. The contrast between the two of us was painful. He looked like a god. I looked very average, even for a human, almost shamefully plain. I flipped the picture over with a feeling of disgust.

Instead of doing my homework, I stayed up to put my pictures into the album. With a ballpoint pen I scrawled captions under all the pictures, the names and the dates. I got to the picture of Edward and me, and, without looking at it too long, I folded it in half and stuck it under the metal tab, Edward-side up.

When I was done, I stuffed the second set of prints in a fresh envelope and penned a long thank-you letter to Renee.

Edward still hadn't come over. I didn't want to admit that he was the reason I'd stayed up so late, but of course he was. I tried to remember the last time he'd stayed away like this, without an excuse, a phone call… He never had.

Again, I didn't sleep well.

School followed the silent, frustrating, terrifying pattern of the last two days. I felt relief when I saw Edward waiting for me in the parking lot, but it faded quickly. He was no different, unless maybe more remote.

It was hard to even remember the reason for all this mess. My birthday already felt like the distant past. If only Alice would come back. Soon. Before this got any more out of hand.

But I couldn't count on that. I decided that, if I couldn't talk to him today, really talk, then I was going to see Carlisle tomorrow. I had to do something.

After school, Edward and I were going to talk it out, I promised myself. I wasn't accepting any excuses.

He walked me to my truck, and I steeled myself to make my demands.

"Do you mind if I come over today?" he asked before we got to the truck, beating me to the punch.

"Of course not."

"Now?" he asked again, opening my door for me.

"Sure," I kept my voice even, though I didn't like the urgency in his tone. "I was just going to drop a letter for Renee in the mailbox on the way. I'll meet you there."

He looked at the fat envelope on the passenger seat. Suddenly, he reached over me and snagged it.

"I'll do it," he said quietly. "And I'll still beat you there." He smiled my favorite crooked smile, but it was wrong. It didn't reach his eyes.

"Okay," I agreed, unable to smile back. He shut the door, and headed toward his car.

He did beat me home. He was parked in Charlie's spot when I pulled up in front of the house. That was a bad sign. He didn't plan to stay, then. I shook my head and took a deep breath, trying to locate some courage.

He got out of his car when I stepped out of the truck, and came to meet me. He reached to take my book bag from me. That was normal. But he shoved it back onto the seat. That was not normal.

"Come for a walk with me," he suggested in an unemotional voice, taking my hand.

I didn't answer. I couldn't think of a way to protest, but I instantly knew that I wanted to. I didn't like this. This is bad, this is very bad, the voice in my head repeated again and again.

But he didn't wait for an answer. He pulled me along toward the east side of the yard, where the forest encroached. I followed unwillingly, trying to think through the panic. It was what I wanted, I reminded myself. The chance to talk it all through. So why was the panic choking me?

We'd gone only a few steps into the trees when he stopped. We were barely on the trail—I could still see the house.

Some walk.

Edward leaned against a tree and stared at me, his expression unreadable.

"Okay, let's talk," I said. It sounded braver than it felt.

He took a deep breath.

"Beau, we're leaving."

I took a deep breath, too. This was an acceptable option. I thought I was prepared. But I still had to ask.

"Why now? Another year—"

"Beau, it's time. How much longer could we stay in Forks, after all? Carlisle can barely pass for thirty, and he's claiming thirty-three now. We'd have to start over soon regardless."

His answer confused me. I thought the point of leaving was to let his family live in peace. Why did we have to leave if they were going? I stared at him, trying to understand what he meant.

He stared back coldly.

With a roll of nausea, I realized I'd misunderstood.

"When you say we—," I whispered.

"I mean my family and myself." Each word separate and distinct.

I shook my head back and forth mechanically, trying to clear it. He waited without any sign of impatience. It took a few minutes before I could speak.

"Okay," I said. "I'll come with you."

"You can't, Beau. Where we're going… It's not the right place for you."

"Where you are is the right place for me."

"I'm no good for you, Beau."

"Don't be ridiculous." I wanted to sound angry, but it just sounded like I was begging. "You're the very best part of my life."

"My world is not for you," he said grimly.

"What happened with Jasper—that was nothing, Edward! Nothing!"

"You're right," he agreed. "It was exactly what was to be expected."

"You promised! In Phoenix, you promised that you would stay—"

"As long as that was best for you," he interrupted to correct me.

"No! This is about my soul, isn't it?" I shouted, furious, the words exploding out of me—somehow it still sounded like a plea. "Carlisle told me about that, and I don't care, Edward. I don't care! You can have my soul. I don't want it without you—it's yours already!"

He took a deep breath and stared, unseeingly, at the ground for a long moment. His mouth twisted the tiniest bit. When he finally looked up, his eyes were different, harder—like the liquid gold had frozen solid.

"Beau, I don't want you to come with me." He spoke the words slowly and precisely, his cold eyes on my face, watching as I absorbed what he was really saying.

There was a pause as I repeated the words in my head a few times, sifting through them for their real intent.

"You… don't… want me?" I tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order.

"No."

I stared, uncomprehending, into his eyes. He stared back without apology. His eyes were like topaz—hard and clear and very deep. I felt like I could see into them for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their bottomless depths could I see a contradiction to the word he'd spoken.

"Well, that changes things." I was surprised by how calm and reasonable my voice sounded. It must be because I was so numb. I couldn't realize what he was telling me. It still didn't make any sense.

He looked away into the trees as he spoke again. 

"Of course, I'll always love you… in a way. But what happened the other night made me realize that it's time for a change. Because I'm… tired of pretending to be something I'm not, Beau. I am not human." He looked back, and the icy planes of his perfect face were not human. 

"I've let this go on much too long, and I'm sorry for that."

"Don't." My voice was just a whisper now; awareness was beginning to seep through me, trickling like acid through my veins. 

"Don't do this."

He just stared at me, and I could see from his eyes that my words were far too late. He already had.

"You're not good for me, Beau." He turned his earlier words around, and so I had no argument. How well I knew that I wasn't good enough for him.

I opened my mouth to say something, and then closed it again. He waited patiently, his face wiped clean of all emotion. I tried again.

"If… that's what you want."

He nodded once.

My whole body went numb. I couldn't feel anything below the neck.

"I would like to ask one favor, though, if that's not too much," he said.

I wonder what he saw on my face, because something flickered across his own face in response. But, before I could identify it, he'd composed his features into the same serene mask.

"Anything," I vowed, my voice faintly stronger. My face twisted though, displaying my pain and anger at this request.

As I watched, his frozen eyes melted. The gold became liquid again, molten, burning down into mine with an intensity that was overwhelming.

"Don't do anything reckless or stupid," he ordered, no longer detached. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

I nodded helplessly.

His eyes cooled, the distance returned.

"I'm thinking of Charlie, of course. He needs you. Take care of yourself—for him."

I nodded again. "I will," I whispered.

He seemed to relax just a little.

"And I'll make you a promise in return," he said. "I promise that this will be the last time you'll see me. I won't come back. I won't put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I'd never existed."

My knees must have started to shake, because the trees were suddenly wobbling. I could hear the blood pounding faster than normal behind my ears. His voice sounded farther away.

He smiled gently. "Don't worry. You're human—your memory is no more than a sieve. Time heals all wounds for your kind."

"And your memories?" I asked. It sounded like there was something stuck in my throat, like I was choking.

"Well"—he hesitated for a short second—"I won't forget. But my kind… we're very easily distracted."

He smiled; the smile was tranquil and it did not touch his eyes.

He took a step away from me. "That's everything, I suppose. We won't bother you again."

The plural caught my attention. That surprised me; I would have thought I was beyond noticing anything.

"Alice isn't coming back," I realized. I don't know how he heard me—the words made no sound—but he seemed to understand.

He shook his head slowly, always watching my face.

"No. They're all gone. I stayed behind to tell you goodbye."

"Alice is gone?" My voice was blank with disbelief.

"She wanted to say goodbye, but I convinced her that a clean break would be better for you."

I was dizzy; it was hard to concentrate. His words swirled around in my head, and I heard the doctor at the hospital in Phoenix, last spring, as he showed me the X-rays. You can see it's a clean break, his finger traced along the picture of my severed bone. That's good. It will heal more easily, more quickly.

I tried to breathe normally. I needed to concentrate, to find a way out of this nightmare.

"Goodbye, Beau," he said in the same quiet, peaceful voice.

"Wait!" I choked out the word, reaching for him, willing my deadened legs to carry me forward.

I thought he was reaching for me, too. But his cold hands locked around my wrists and pinned them to my sides. He leaned down, and pressed his lips very lightly to my forehead for the briefest instant.

My eyes closed.

"Take care of yourself," he breathed, cool against my skin.

There was a light, unnatural breeze. My eyes flashed open. The leaves on a small vine maple shuddered with the gentle wind of his passage.

He was gone.

With shaky legs, ignoring the fact that my action was useless, I followed him into the forest. The evidence of his path had disappeared instantly. There were no footprints, the leaves were still again, but I walked forward without thinking. I could not do anything else. I had to keep moving. If I stopped looking for him, it was over.

Love, life, meaning… over.

I walked and walked. Time made no sense as I pushed slowly through the thick undergrowth. It was hours passing, but also only seconds. Maybe it felt like time had frozen because the forest looked the same no matter how far I went. I started to worry that I was traveling in a circle, a very small circle at that, but I kept going. I stumbled often, and, as it grew darker and darker, I fell often, too.

Finally, I tripped over something—it was black now, I had no idea what caught my foot—and I stayed down. I rolled onto my side, so that I could breathe, and curled up on the wet bracken.

As I lay there, I had a feeling that more time was passing than I realized. I couldn't remember how long it had been since nightfall. Was it always so dark here at night? Surely, as a rule, some little bit of moonlight would filter down through the clouds, through the chinks in the canopy of trees, and find the ground.

Not tonight. Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight—a lunar eclipse, a new moon.

A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.

It was black for a long time before I heard them calling.

Someone was shouting my name. It was muted, muffled by the wet growth that surrounded me, but it was definitely my name. I didn't recognize the voice. I thought about answering, but I was dazed, and it took a long time to come to the conclusion that I should answer. By then, the calling had stopped.

Sometime later, the rain woke me up. I don't think I'd really fallen asleep; I was just lost in an unthinking stupor, holding with all my strength to the numbness that kept me from realizing what I didn't want to know.

The rain bothered me a little. It was cold. I unwrapped my arms from around my legs to cover my face.

It was then that I heard the calling again. It was farther away this time, and sometimes it sounded like several voices were calling at once. I tried to breathe deeply. I remembered that I should answer, but I didn't think they would be able to hear me. Would I be able to shout loud enough?

Suddenly, there was another sound, startlingly close. A kind of snuffling, an animal sound. It sounded big.

I wondered if I should feel afraid. I didn't—just numb. It didn't matter. The snuffling went away.

The rain continued, and I could feel the water pooling up against my cheek. I was trying to gather the strength to turn my head when I saw the light.

At first it was just a dim glow reflecting off the bushes in the distance. It grew brighter and brighter, illuminating a large space unlike the focused beam of a flashlight. The light broke through the closest brush, and I could see that it was a propane lantern, but that was all I could see—the brightness blinded me for a moment.

"Beau."

The voice was deep and unfamiliar, but full of recognition. He wasn't calling my name to search, he was acknowledging that I was found.

I stared up—impossibly high it seemed—at the dark face that I could now see above me. I was vaguely aware that the stranger probably only looked so tall because my head was still on the ground.

"Have you been hurt?"

I knew the words meant something, but I could only stare, bewildered. How could the meaning matter at this point?

"Beau, my name is Sam Uley."

There was nothing familiar about his name.

"Charlie sent me to look for you."

Charlie? That struck a chord, and I tried to pay more attention to what he was saying. Charlie mattered, if nothing else did.

The tall man held out a hand. I gazed at it, not sure what I was supposed to do.

His black eyes appraised me for a second, and then he shrugged. In a quick and supple notion, he pulled me up from the ground and into his arms as if I weighed nothing.

I hung there, limp, as he loped swiftly through the wet forest. Some part of me knew this should upset me—being carried away by a stranger. But there was nothing left in me to upset.

It didn't seem like too much time passed before there were lights and the deep babble of many male voices. Sam Uley slowed as he approached the commotion.

"I've got him!" he called in a booming voice.

The babble ceased, and then picked up again with more intensity. A confusing swirl of faces moved over me. Sam's voice was the only one that made sense in the chaos, perhaps because my ear was against his chest.

"No, I don't think he's hurt," he told someone. "He just keeps saying 'He's gone.' "

Was I saying that out loud? I bit down on my lip.

"Beau, son, are you all right?"

That was one voice I would know anywhere—even distorted, as it was now, with worry.

"Charlie?" My voice sounded strange and small.

"I'm right here, baby."

There was a shifting under me, followed by the leathery smell of my dad's sheriff jacket. Charlie staggered under my weight.

"Maybe I should hold on to him," Sam Uley suggested.

"I've got him," Charlie said, a little breathless.

He walked slowly, struggling. I wished I could tell him to put me down and let me walk, but I couldn't find my voice.

There were lights everywhere, held by the crowd walking with him. It felt like a parade. Or a funeral procession. I closed my eyes.

"We're almost home now, son," Charlie mumbled now and then.

I opened my eyes again when I heard the door unlock. We were on the porch of our house, and the tall dark man named Sam was holding the door for Charlie, one arm extended toward us, as if he was preparing to catch me when Charlie's arms failed.

But Charlie managed to get me through the door and to the couch in the living room.

"Dad, I'm all wet," I objected feebly.

"That doesn't matter." His voice was gruff. And then he was talking to someone else. "Blankets are in the cupboard at the top of the stairs."

"Beau?" a new voice asked. I looked at the gray-haired man leaning over me, and recognition came after a few slow seconds.

"Dr. Gerandy?" I mumbled.

"That's right, son," he said. "Are you hurt, Beau?"

It took me a minute to think that through. I was confused by the memory of Sam Uley's similar question in the woods. Only Sam had asked something else: Have you been hurt? he'd said. The difference seemed significant somehow.

Dr. Gerandy was waiting. One grizzled eyebrow rose, and the wrinkles on his forehead deepened.

"I'm not hurt," I lied. The words were true enough for what he'd asked.

His warm hand touched my forehead, and his fingers pressed against the inside of my wrist. I watched his lips as he counted to himself, his eyes on his watch.

"What happened to you?" he asked casually.

I froze under his hand, tasting panic in the back of my throat.

"Did you get lost in the woods?" he prodded. 

I was aware of several other people listening. Three tall men with dark faces—from La Push, the Quileute Indian reservation down on the coastline, I guessed—Sam Uley among them, were standing very close together and staring at me. Mr. Newton was there with Mike and Mr. Weber, Angela's father; they all were watching me more surreptitiously than the strangers. Other deep voices rumbled from the kitchen and outside the front door. Half the town must have been looking for me.

Charlie was the closest. He leaned in to hear my answer.

"Yes," I whispered. "I got lost."

The doctor nodded, thoughtful, his fingers probing gently against the glands under my jaw. Charlie's face hardened.

"Do you feel tired?" Dr. Gerandy asked.

I nodded and closed my eyes obediently.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with him," I heard the doctor mutter to Charlie after a moment.

"Just exhaustion. Let him sleep it off, and I'll come check on him tomorrow," he paused. He must have looked at his watch, because he added, "Well, later today actually."

There was a creaking sound as they both pushed off from the couch to get to their feet.

"Is it true?" Charlie whispered. Their voices were farther away now. I strained to hear. "Did they leave?"

"Dr. Cullen asked us not to say anything," Dr. Gerandy answered. "The offer was very sudden; they had to choose immediately. Carlisle didn't want to make a big production out of leaving."

"A little warning might have been nice," Charlie grumbled.

Dr. Gerandy sounded uncomfortable when he replied. "Yes, well, in this situation, some warning might have been called for."

I didn't want to listen anymore. I felt around for the edge of the quilt someone had laid on top of me, and pulled it over my ear.

I drifted in and out of alertness. I heard Charlie whisper thanks to the volunteers as, one by one, they left. I felt his fingers on my forehead, and then the weight of another blanket. The phone rang a few times, and he hurried to catch it before it could wake me. He muttered reassurances in a low voice to the callers.

"Yeah, we found him. He's okay. He got lost. He's fine now," he said again and again.

I heard the springs in the armchair groan when he settled himself in for the night.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again.

Charlie moaned as he struggled to his feet, and then he rushed, stumbling, to the kitchen I pulled my head deeper under the blankets, not wanting to listen to the same conversation again.

"Yeah," Charlie said, and yawned.

His voice changed, it was much more alert when he spoke again. "Where?'" There was a pause.

"You're sure it's outside the reservation?" Another short pause. "But what could be burning out there?" He sounded both worried and mystified.

"Look, I'll call down there and check it out." I listened with more interest as he punched in a number.

"Hey, Billy, it's Charlie—sorry I'm calling so early… no, he's fine. He's sleeping… Thanks, but that's not why I called. I just got a call from Mrs. Stanley, and she says that from her second-story window she can see fires out on the sea cliffs, but I didn't really… Oh!" 

Suddenly there was an edge in his voice—irritation… or anger. 

"And why are they doing that? Uh huh. Really?" He said it sarcastically.

"Well, don't apologize to me. Yeah, yeah. Just make sure the flames don't spread… I know, I know, I'm surprised they got them lit at all in this weather."

Charlie hesitated, and then added grudgingly. "Thanks for sending Sam and the other boys up. You were right—they do know the forest better than we do. It was Sam who found her, so I owe you one… Yeah, I'll talk to you later," he agreed, still sour, before hanging up.

Charlie muttered something incoherent as he shuffled back to the living room.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He hurried to my side.

"I'm sorry I woke you."

"Is something burning?"

"It's nothing," he assured me. "Just some bonfires out on the cliffs."

"Bonfires?" I asked. My voice didn't sound curious. It sounded dead.

Charlie frowned. "Some of the kids from the reservation being rowdy," he explained.

"Why?" I wondered dully.

I could tell he didn't want to answer. He looked at the floor under his knees. "They're celebrating the news." His tone was bitter.

There was only one piece of news I could think of, try as I might not to. And then the pieces snapped together.

"Because the Cullens left," I whispered. "They don't like the Cullens in La Push—I'd forgotten about that."

The Quileutes had their superstitions about the "cold ones," the blood-drinkers that were enemies to their tribe, just like they had their legends of the great flood and wolf-men ancestors. Just stories, folklore, to most of them. Then there were the few that believed. Charlie's good friend Billy Black believed, though even Jacob, his own son, thought he was full of stupid superstitions. Billy had warned me to stay away from the Cullens…

The name stirred something inside me, something that began to claw its way toward the surface, something I knew I didn't want to face.

"It's ridiculous," Charlie spluttered.

We sat in silence for a moment. The sky was no longer black outside the window. Somewhere behind the rain, the sun was beginning to rise.

"Beau?" Charlie asked.

I looked at him uneasily.

"He left you alone in the woods?" Charlie guessed.

I deflected his question. "How did you know where to find me?" My mind shied away from the inevitable awareness that was coming, coming quickly now.

"Your note," Charlie answered, surprised. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a much-abused piece of paper. It was dirty and damp, with multiple creases from being opened and refolded many times. He unfolded it again, and held it up as evidence. The messy handwriting was remarkably close to my own.

Going for a walk with Edward, up the path, it said. Back soon, B.

"When you didn't come back, I called the Cullens, and no one answered," Charlie said in a low voice.

"Then I called the hospital, and Dr. Gerandy told me that Carlisle was gone."

"Where did they go?" I mumbled.

He stared at me. "Didn't Edward tell you?"

I shook my head, recoiling. The sound of his name unleashed the thing that was clawing inside of me—a pain that knocked me breathless, astonished me with its force.

Charlie eyed me doubtfully as he answered. "Carlisle took a job with a big hospital in Los Angeles. I guess they threw a lot of money at him."

Sunny L.A. The last place they would really go. I remembered my nightmare with the mirror… the bright sunlight shimmering off of his skin—

Agony ripped through me with the memory of his face.

"I want to know if Edward left you alone out there in the middle of the woods," Charlie insisted.

His name sent another wave of torture through me. I shook my head, frantic, desperate to escape the pain. "It was my fault. He left me right here on the trail, in sight of the house… but I tried to follow him."

Charlie started to say something; childishly, I covered my ears. "I can't talk about this anymore, Dad. I want to go to my room."

Before he could answer, I scrambled up from the couch and lurched my way up the stairs.

Someone had been in the house to leave a note for Charlie, a note that would lead him to find me. From the minute that I'd realized this, a horrible suspicion began to grow in my head. I rushed to my room, shutting and locking the door behind me before I ran to the CD player by my bed.

Everything looked exactly the same as I'd left it. I pressed down on the top of the CD player. The latch unhooked, and the lid slowly swung open.

It was empty.

The album Renee had given me sat on the floor beside the bed, just where I'd put it last. I lifted the cover with a shaking hand.

I didn't have to flip any farther than the first page. The little metal corners no longer held a picture in place. The page was blank except for my own handwriting scrawled across the bottom: Edward Cullen, Charlie's kitchen, Sept. 13th.

I stopped there. I was sure that he would have been very thorough.

It will be as if I'd never existed, he'd promised me.

I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn't lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under.

I did not resurface.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m completely skipping the next few chapters, I’m going straight to the meadow scene with Laurant. The skipped chapters with Jake did happen tho! (Edited).

I dialed, and then waited without high expectations.

It caught me off guard when Billy answered on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hey, the phone is working again! Hi, Billy. It's Beau. I was just calling to see how Jacob is doing. Is he up for visitors yet? I was thinking about dropping by—"

"I'm sorry, Beau," Billy interrupted, and I wondered if he were watching TV; he sounded distracted.

"He's not in."

"Oh." It took me a second. "So he's feeling better then?"

"Yeah," Billy hesitated for an instant too long. "Turns out it wasn't mono after all. Just some other virus."

"Oh. So… where is he?"

"He's giving some friends a ride up to Port Angeles—I think they were going to catch a double feature or something. He's gone for the whole day."

"Well, that's a relief. I've been so worried. I'm glad he felt good enough to get out." My voice sounded horribly phony as I babbled on.

Jacob was better, but not well enough to call me. He was out with friends. I was sitting home, missing him more every hour. I was lonely, worried, bored… perforated—and now also desolate as I realized that the week apart had not had the same effect on him.

"Is there anything in particular you wanted?" Billy asked politely.

"No, not really."

"Well, I'll tell him that you called," Billy promised. "Bye, Beau."

"Bye," I replied, but he'd already hung up.

I stood for a moment with the phone still in my hand.

Jacob must have changed his mind, just like I'd feared. He was going to take my advice and not waste any more time on someone who couldn't return his feelings. I felt the blood run out of my face.

"Something wrong?" Charlie asked as he came down the stairs.

"No," I lied, hanging up the phone. "Billy says Jacob is feeling better. It wasn't mono. So that's good."

"Is he coming here, or are you going there?" Charlie asked absentmindedly as he started poking through the fridge.

"Neither," I admitted. "He's going out with some other friends."

The tone of my voice finally caught Charlie's attention. He looked up at me with sudden alarm, his hands frozen around a package of cheese slices.

"Isn't it a little early for lunch?" I asked as lightly as I could manage, trying to distract him.

"No, I'm just packing something to take out to the river…"

"Oh, fishing today?"

"Well, Harry called… and it's not raining." He was creating a stack of food on the counter as he spoke.

Suddenly he looked up again as if he'd just realized something. "Say, did you want me to stay with you, since Jake's out?"

"That's okay, Dad," I said, working to sound indifferent. "The fish bite better when the weather's nice."

He stared at me, indecision clear on his face. I knew that he was worrying, afraid to leave me alone, in case I got "mopey" again.

"Seriously, Dad. I think I'll call Jessica," I fibbed quickly. I'd rather be alone than have him watching me all day. "We have a Calculus test to study for. I could use her help." That part was true. But I'd have to make do without it.

"That's a good idea. You've been spending so much time with Jacob, your other friends are going to think you've forgotten them."

I smiled and nodded as if I cared what my other friends thought.

Charlie started to turn, but then spun back with a worried expression. "Hey, you'll study here or at Jess's, right?"

"Sure, where else?"

"Well, it's just that I want you to be careful to stay out of the woods, like I told you before."

It took me a minute to understand, distracted as I was. "More bear trouble?"

Charlie nodded, frowning. "We've got a missing hiker—the rangers found his camp early this morning, but no sign of him. There were some really big animal prints… of course those could have come later, smelling the food… Anyway, they're setting traps for it now."

"Oh," I said vaguely. I wasn't really listening to his warnings; I was much more upset by the situation with Jacob than by the possibility of being eaten by a bear.

I was glad that Charlie was in a hurry. He didn't wait for me to call Jessica, so I didn't have to put on that charade. I went through the motions of gathering my school-books on the kitchen table to pack them in my bag; that was probably too much, and if he hadn't been eager to hit the holes, it might have made him suspicious.

I was so busy looking busy that the ferociously empty day ahead didn't really crash down on me until after I'd watched him drive away. It only took about two minutes of staring at the silent kitchen phone to decide that I wasn't staying home today. I considered my options.

I wasn't going to call Jessica. As far as I could tell, Jessica had crossed over to the dark side.

I could drive to La Push and get my motorcycle—an appealing thought but for one minor problem: who was going to drive me to the emergency room if I needed it afterward?

Or… I already had our map and compass in the truck. I was pretty sure I understood the process well enough by now that I wouldn't get lost. Maybe I could eliminate two lines today, putting us ahead of schedule for whenever Jacob decided to honor me with his presence again. I refused to think about how long that might be. Or if it was going to be never.

I felt a brief twinge of guilt as I realized how Charlie would feel about this, but I ignored it. I just couldn't stay in the house again today.

A few minutes later I was on the familiar dirt road that led to nowhere in particular. I had the windows rolled down and I drove as fast as was healthy for my truck, trying to enjoy the wind against my face. It was cloudy, but almost dry—a very nice day, for Forks.

Getting started took me longer than it would have taken Jacob. After I parked in the usual spot, I had to spend a good fifteen minutes studying the little needle on the compass face and the markings on the now worn map. When I was reasonably certain that I was following the right line of the web, I set off into the woods.

The forest was full of life today, all the little creatures enjoying the momentary dryness. Somehow, though, even with the birds chirping and cawing, the insects buzzing noisily around my head, and the occasional scurry of the field mice through the shrubs, the forest seemed creepier today; it reminded me of my most recent nightmare. I knew it was just because I was alone, missing Jacob's carefree whistle and the sound of another pair of feet squishing across the damp ground.

The sense of unease grew stronger the deeper I got into the trees. Breathing started to get more difficult—not because of exertion, but because I was having trouble with the stupid hole in my chest again. I kept my arms tight around my torso and tried to banish the ache from my thoughts. I almost turned around, but I hated to waste the effort I'd already expended.

The rhythm of my footsteps started to numb my mind and my pain as I trudged on. My breathing evened out eventually, and I was glad I hadn't quit. I was getting better at this bushwhacking thing; I could tell I was faster.

I didn't realize quite how much more efficiently I was moving. I thought I'd covered maybe four miles, and I wasn't even starting to look around for it yet. And then, with an abruptness that disoriented me, I stepped through a low arch made by two vine maples—pushing past the chest-high ferns—into the meadow.

It was the same place, of that I was instantly sure. I'd never seen another clearing so symmetrical. It was as perfectly round as if someone had intentionally created the flawless circle, tearing out the trees but leaving no evidence of that violence in the waving grass. To the east, I could hear the stream bubbling quietly.

The place wasn't nearly so stunning without the sunlight, but it was still very beautiful and serene. It was the wrong season for wildflowers; the ground was thick with tall grass that swayed in the light breeze like ripples across a lake.

It was the same place… but it didn't hold what I had been searching for.

The disappointment was nearly as instantaneous as the recognition. I sank down right where I was, kneeling there at the edge of the clearing, beginning to gasp.

What was the point of going any farther? Nothing lingered here. Nothing more than the memories that I could have called back whenever I wanted to, if I was ever willing to endure the corresponding pain—the pain that had me now, had me cold. There was nothing special about this place without him. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd hoped to feel here, but the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everywhere else. Just like my nightmares. My head swirled dizzily.

At least I'd come alone. I felt a rush of thankfulness as I realized that. If I'd discovered the meadow with Jacob… well, there was no way I could have disguised the abyss I was plunging into now. How could I have explained the way I was fracturing into pieces, the way I had to curl into a ball to keep the empty hole from tearing me apart? It was so much better that I didn't have an audience.

And I wouldn't have to explain to anyone why I was in such a hurry to leave, either. Jacob would have assumed, after going to so much trouble to locate the stupid place, I would want to spend more than a few seconds here. But I was already trying to find the strength to get to my feet again, forcing myself out of the ball so that I could escape. There was too much pain in this empty place to bear—I would crawl away if I had to.

How lucky that I was alone!

Alone. I repeated the word with grim satisfaction as I wrenched myself to my feet despite the pain. At precisely that moment, a figure stepped out from the trees to the north, some thirty paces away.

A dizzying array of emotions shot through me in a second. The first was surprise; I was far from any trail here, and I didn't expect company. Then, as my eyes focused on the motionless figure, seeing the utter stillness, the pallid skin, a rush of piercing hope rocked through me. I suppressed it viciously, fighting against the equally sharp lash of agony as my eyes continued to the face beneath the black hair, the face that wasn't the one I wanted to see. Next was fear; this was not the face I grieved for, but it was close enough for me to know that the man facing me was no stray hiker.

And finally, in the end, recognition.

"Laurent!" I cried in surprised pleasure.

It was an irrational response. I probably should have stopped at fear.

Laurent had been one of James's coven when we'd first met. He hadn't been involved with the hunt that followed—the hunt where I was the quarry—but that was only because he was afraid; I was protected by a bigger coven than his own. It would have been different if that wasn't the case—he'd had no compunctions, at the time, against making a meal of me. Of course, he must have changed, because he'd gone to Alaska to live with the other civilized coven there, the other family that refused to drink human blood for ethical reasons. The other family like… but I couldn't let myself think the name.

Yes, fear would have made more sense, but all I felt was an overwhelming satisfaction. The meadow was a magic place again. A darker magic than I'd expected, to be sure, but magic all the same. Here was the connection I'd sought. The proof, however remote, that—somewhere in the same world where I lived— he did exist.

It was impossible how exactly the same Laurent looked. I suppose it was very silly and human to expect some kind of change in the last year. But there was something… I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"Beau?" he asked, looking more astonished than I felt.

"You remember." I smiled. It was ridiculous that I should be so elated because a vampire knew my name.

He grinned. "I didn't expect to see you here." He strolled toward me, his expression bemused.

"Isn't it the other way around? I do live here. I thought you'd gone to Alaska."

He stopped about ten paces away, cocking his head to the side. His face was the most beautiful face I'd seen in what felt like an eternity. I studied his features with a strangely greedy sense of release. 

Here was someone I didn't have to pretend for—someone who already knew everything I could never say.

"You're right," he agreed. "I did go to Alaska. Still, I didn't expect… When I found the Cullen place empty, I thought they'd moved on."

"Oh." I bit my lip as the name set the raw edges of my wound throbbing. It took me a second to compose myself. Laurent waited with curious eyes.

"They did move on," I finally managed to tell him.

"Hmm," he murmured. "I'm surprised they left you behind. Weren't you sort of a pet of theirs?" His eyes were innocent of any intended offense.

I smiled wryly. "Something like that."

"Hmm," he said, thoughtful again.

At that precise moment, I realized why he looked the same—too much the same. After Carlisle told us that Laurent had stayed with Tanya's family, I'd begun to picture him, on the rare occasions that I thought of him at all, with the same golden eyes that the… Cullens—I forced the name out, wincing—had. That all good vampires had.

I took an involuntary step back, and his curious, dark red eyes followed the movement.

"Do they visit often?" he asked, still casual, but his weight shifted toward me.

"Lie," the beautiful velvet voice whispered anxiously from my memory.

I started at the sound of his voice, but it should not have surprised me. Was I nor in the worst danger imaginable? The motorcycle was safe as kittens next to this.

I did what the voice said to do.

"Now and again." I tried to make my voice light, relaxed. "The time seems longer to me, I imagine. You know how they get distracted…" I was beginning to babble. I had to work to shut myself up.

"Hmm," he said again. "The house smelled like it had been vacant for a while…"

"You must lie better than that, Beau," the voice urged.

I tried. "I'll have to mention to Carlisle that you stopped by. He'll be sorry they missed your visit." I pretended to deliberate for a second. "But I probably shouldn't mention it to… Edward, I suppose—" 

I barely managed to say his name, and it twisted my expression on the way out, ruining my bluff 

"—he has such a temper… well, I'm sure you remember. He's still touchy about the whole James thing." I rolled my eyes and waved one hand dismissively, like it was all ancient history, but there was an edge of hysteria to my voice. I wondered if he would recognize what it was.

"Is he really?" Laurent asked pleasantly… skeptically.

I kept my reply short, so that my voice wouldn't betray my panic. "Mm-hmm."

Laurent took a casual step to the side, gazing around at the little meadow. I didn't miss that the step brought him closer to me. In my head, the voice responded with a low snarl.

"So how are things working out in Denali? Carlisle said you were staying with Tanya?" My voice was too high.

The question made him pause. "I like Tanya very much," he mused. "And her sister Irina even more… I've never stayed in one place for so long before, and I enjoy the advantages, the novelty of it. But, the restrictions are difficult… I'm surprised that any of them can keep it up for long." He smiled at me conspiratorially. "Sometimes I cheat."

I couldn't swallow. My foot started to ease back, but I froze when his red eyes flickered down to catch the movement.

"Oh," I said in a faint voice. "Jasper has problems with that, too."

"Don't move," the voice whispered. I tried to do what he instructed. It was hard; the instinct to take flight was nearly uncontrollable.

"Really?" Laurent seemed interested. "Is that why they left?"

"No," I answered honestly. "Jasper is more careful at home."

"Yes," Laurent agreed. "I am, too."

The step forward he took now was quite deliberate.

"Did Victoria ever find you?" I asked, breathless, desperate to distract him. It was the first question that popped into my head, and I regretted it as soon as the words were spoken. Victoria—who had hunted me with James, and then disappeared—was not someone I wanted to think of at this particular moment.

But the question did stop him.

"Yes," he said, hesitating on that step. "I actually came here as a favor to her." He made a face. "She won't be happy about this."

"About what?" I said eagerly, inviting him to continue. He was glaring into the trees, away from me. I took advantage of his diversion, taking a furtive step back.

He looked back at me and smiled—the expression made him look like a black-haired angel.

"About me killing you," he answered in a seductive purr.

I staggered back another step. The frantic growling in my head made it hard to hear.

"She wanted to save that part for herself," he went on blithely. "She's sort of… put out with you, Beau."

"Me?" I squeaked.

He shook his head and chuckled. "I know, it seems a little backward to me, too. But James was her mate, and your Edward killed him."

Even here, on the point of death, his name tore against my unhealed wounds like a serrated edge.

Laurent was oblivious to my reaction. "She thought it more appropriate to kill you than Edward—fair turnabout, mate for mate. She asked me to get the lay of the land for her, so to speak. I didn't imagine you would be so easy to get to. So maybe her plan was flawed—apparently it wouldn't be the revenge she imagined, since you must not mean very much to him if he left you here unprotected."

Another blow, another tear through my chest.

Laurent's weight shifted slightly, and I stumbled another step back.

He frowned. "I suppose she'll be angry, all the same."

"Then why not wait for her?" I choked out.

A mischievous grin rearranged his features. "Well, you've caught me at a bad time, Beau. I didn't come to this place on Victoria's mission—I was hunting. I'm quite thirsty, and you do smell… simply mouthwatering."

Laurent looked at me with approval, as if he meant it as a compliment.

"Threaten him," the beautiful delusion ordered, his voice distorted with dread.

"He'll know it was you," I whispered obediently. "You won't get away with this."

"And why not?" Laurent's smile widened. He gazed around the small opening in the trees. "The scent will wash away with the next rain. No one will find your body—you'll simply go missing, like so many, many other humans. There's no reason for Edward to think of me, if he cares enough to investigate. This is nothing personal, let me assure you, Beau. Just thirst."

"Beg," my hallucination begged.

"Please," I gasped.

Laurent shook his head, his face kind. "Look at it this way, Beau. You're very lucky I was the one to find you."

"Am I?" I mouthed, faltering another step back.

Laurent followed, lithe and graceful.

"Yes," he assured me. "I'll be very quick. You won't feel a thing, I promise. Oh, I'll lie to Victoria about that later, naturally, just to placate her. But if you knew what she had planned for you, Beau..." He shook his head with a slow movement, almost as if in disgust. "I swear you'd be thanking me for this."

I stared at him in horror.

He sniffed at the breeze that blew threads of my hair in his direction. "Mouthwatering," he repeated, inhaling deeply.

I tensed for the spring, my eyes squinting as I cringed away, and the sound of Edward's furious roar echoed distantly in the back of my head. His name burst through all the walls I'd built to contain it. Edward, Edward, Edward. I was going to die. It shouldn't matter if I thought of him now. Edward, I love you.

Through my narrowed eyes, I watched as Laurent took one more slow step forward, before he used his natural speed to appear inches away from me. His cool breath washed over my face. It reminded me of Edward’s. About how everything about a vampire is meant to draw us in. He was right. 

As I unconsciously leaned forward, he copied my movement. He murmured one last thing, cold breath washing over my neck, causing goosebumps to ripple across my skin. 

“You should be thanking me.” And in less than a second, his cold lips closed as his teeth pierced my neck. 

The same fire I remembered from James’ bite ignited in my blood as I cried out. Suddenly the teeth were gone as he pulled back. I fell to my knees as he stared into the forest. My blood stained his lips. Then, he started slowly backing away from me. My hand flew to my neck, sliding in the blood now flowing out of me.

"I don't believe it," he said, his voice so low that I barely heard it.

I had to look then. My eyes scanned the meadow, searching for the interruption that had extended my life by a few seconds. At first I saw nothing, and my gaze flickered back to Laurent. He was retreating more quickly now, his eyes boring into the forest.

The fire clouded my focus, one hand held to my neck as if to help the pain. My breathing was erratic, as cries ripped their way out of my throat. I would be embarrassed making these noises if I had been able to think about anything other than the pain. My hands were slippery with blood.

Then I saw it; a huge black shape eased out of the trees, quiet as a shadow, and stalked deliberately toward the vampire. It was enormous—as tall as a horse, but thicker, much more muscular. The long muzzle grimaced, revealing a line of dagger-like incisors. A grisly snarl rolled out from between the teeth, rumbling across the clearing like a prolonged crack of thunder.

The bear. Only, it wasn't a bear at all. Still, this gigantic black monster had to be the creature causing all the alarm. From a distance, anyone would assume it was a bear. What else could be so vast, so powerfully built?

I wished I were lucky enough to see it from a distance. Instead, it padded silently through the grass a mere ten feet from where I stood.

"Don't move an inch," Edward's voice whispered.

I stared at the monstrous creature, my mind boggling as I tried to put a name to it. There was a distinctly canine cast to the shape of it, the way it moved. I could only think of one possibility, locked in horror as I was. Yet I'd never imagined that a wolf could get so big.

Another growl rumbled in its throat, and I shuddered away from the sound. And the pain. I was lying on the ground now, nearly writhing as I tried to claw at my own throat. I couldn’t focus on the words leaving my lips when there was chaos happening around me.

Laurent was backing toward the edge of the trees, and, under the freezing terror, confusion swept through me. Why was Laurent retreating? Granted, the wolf was monstrous in size, but it was just an animal. What reason would a vampire have for fearing an animal? And Laurent was afraid. His eyes were wide with horror, just like mine.

As if in answer to my question, suddenly the mammoth wolf was not alone. Flanking it on either side, another two gigantic beasts prowled silently into the meadow. One was a deep gray, the other brown, neither one quite as tall as the first. The gray wolf came through the trees only a few feet from me, its eyes locked on Laurent.

Before I could even react, two more wolves followed, lined up in a V, like geese flying south. Which meant that the rusty brown monster that shrugged through the brush last was close enough for me to touch.

“Please, please, please kill me.” My lips begged, my eyes boring into the wolf’s brown eyes. Something about it pricked at my memory, but was washed away by the venom circulating through my system. It’s warm brown eyes bore into mine. It looked like it was in pain. 

Suddenly, the beast warped. My eyes couldn’t quite catch what had happened. But where a wolf had stood moments before, Jacob Black stood in its’ place. I was still begging him when he rushed to my side, dropping to his knees next to me. The wolves took off after Laurant, and we were alone in the meadow.

I clawed at the ground as he stared at me. The pain was bewildering. Exactly that—I was bewildered. I couldn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of what was happening. My body tried to reject the pain, 

“Beau…” His voice whispered, voice so drenched in pain it was almost like he could feel what was happening to me. 

“Jake! Jacob please!” I gasped out, one hand flailing in his direction. He caught it in his, engulfing my hand in warmth that nearly made me sob. I didn’t want warmth. I needed someone to douse the flames. I needed something _cold._

“It’s alright Beau, it’s okay, I got you, I got you.” He murmured as he gathered me into his arms. I just then noticed that he was naked. Too overwhelmed to care, I curled into his embrace. I could hear a broken sound. A sound so filled with pain it momentarily distracted me. Until I realized that it was me. Then I ignored it. 

The burning grew—rose and peaked and rose again until it surpassed anything I’d ever felt. James, snapping my leg under his foot. That was nothing. That was a soft place to rest on a feather bed. I’d take that now, a hundred times. A hundred snaps. I’d take it and be grateful.

Jake held me, trapping my arms against his chest, the arms that were moments ago trying to claw at my chest. He murmured to me rocked me, the heat from his body coupled with the heat of the venom making me sweat. It soaked through my t-shirt immediately. I don’t know how long we stayed there, but soon enough the thumping of the wolves paws could be heard again. 

But those sounds changed, and then there was a man there, talking to Jake. He was familiar. I couldn’t remember, not while this pain clouded my mind. Burying me in the flames that were chewing their way out from my heart now, spreading with impossible pain through my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up my throat, licking at my face.

“We can’t do anything for him. He’s changing.” The low timber of his voice reached my ears and it clicked. My memory supplied his voice speaking my name, months ago. Sam Uley. He was the one who found me out in the forest when I had tried to follow _him_.

“Sam?” I gasped out, forcing my eyes to open and meet his. His face was stony, but the glint of indecision in his eyes troubled me. 

“Sam please, please, kill me” I begged, trying to wrench myself out of Jacob’s arms. My breathing was ragged, tearing through my throat causing agony to ripple through me. 

“Sam, we can’t kill him. This is _Beau._ I don’t know what to do.” Jake said, voice on the verge of panic, his pleading eyes locked with the older man. Sam stayed silent for a moment, the only sound my harsh breathing and begging. 

“We help him through this. Teach him the ways of the Cullens.” The name tore through my body, making me cry out at the added pain. Jake nodded slowly, face full of sorrow. He stood up, scooping me up in his arms. We started moving through the forest, Sam and Jake conversing lowly, the other wolves following. After a while, we broke through the trees and I immediately bucked in his arms, trying to get away.

“No,” I moaned, tears streaming down my face. “I don’t want to be here…” My voice was hoarse, and Jake’s face screwed up in pain.

“Beau, this is the only safe place for you right now.” Sam said, moving into my line of sight. My nails dug into Jake’s arm but he showed no sign of discomfort. Then I thought about it with what little focus I could muster. I could kill someone, once I turn. A hiker, Charlie, Mike, Angela, Jessica. I let my eyes fall shut and nodded, feeling the movement of them walking again. 

I kept my eyes closed as we entered the abandoned Cullen home. The smell of them washed over me and I whimpered. But I drew in long ragged breaths, the scent calming me even as it tore through my heart. 

A laugh bubbled in my throat as I thought. I wanted this. To turn, to be able to stay with them forever. But I didn’t _know_ what it would feel like. They told me, but I couldn’t grasp the level of pain. They left, and I’m turning, without them. The laugh turned into a sob midway through, as Jake gently laid me in a bed. I buried my face into the familiar pillow, the scent of _him_ overwhelming me. But it calmed my heart, even as the hole he left behind in my heart screamed. 

All I wanted was to die. To never have been born. The whole of my existence did not outweigh this pain. Wasn’t worth living through it for one more heartbeat.

Let me die, let me die, let me die.

“Beau, what can I do?” Jake pleaded with me, smoothing my hair back from my eyes. 

“Too hot!” I gasped out, shaking hands trying to unzip my jacket. Jake helped me, helping me sit up and shed my jacket, and then my drenched t-shirt. I was left in just a pair of jeans as Jake helped me with my shoes and socks. The relief I felt was little, compared to the pain. The endless burn raged on.

It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again. 

I curled into a ball, and passed out. 

When I woke up again, the light was different. It was dark. The pain continued to ravage my body. I could hear a low murmur of voices outside the room. 

“But he’ll be a _leech!_ ” A voice hissed, full of disbelief. 

“Jared, this is Beau Swan. We know he wanted this anyway. He knew about them and continued to love them.” It was Sam’s voice. The other voice was low, also male.

“I don’t want them to come back and have to tell them that I let him be killed before he could turn.” At his words, Jared growled but stomped away. I heard the front door slam shut and the sound of tearing clothes, before the thumping of four legs disappeared into the forest. 

“Jake?” I whispered, voice cracking and barely even a whisper. But I was heard anyway, and he was rushing to my side immediately. 

“Hey, Beau. How are you?” He asked, voice gentle as he enveloped my hand in his larger warmer one. 

“Like someone set me on fire and like a vampire bit me.” I said dryly, body tense as I tried to ignore the pain. I was almost used to it now. It was still there and raging, making my heart race and sweat to coat my skin, but I was no longer begging to be killed. 

Jake let out a weak laugh at what I said, but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

“How long have I been asleep?” I wasn’t asleep, I was unconscious, but I used it anyway, to sooth him. His eyebrows furrowed a little. 

“A little over a day, Beau.” I nodded. It made sense. I thought back to the conversations I had with Carlisle and the others. The pain that lingered every time I thought of them was vague now. 

“I was told that it lasts around three days.” I said, hand clenching into the mattress as another wave of pain rolled through me. My heart was still racing, still trying to save me. It was a useless fight. We both knew that my heart would lose. I clenched my teeth so hard I heard a crack and Jake cuddled into me, trying to get me to relax. 

“Sleep, Beau. It’s okay. You’re safe. It’ll be over sooner if you sleep.” I accepted his words, and to my astonishment I fell asleep immediately, listening to his heart beat in his chest. 

I woke up to my heart stuttering. It was loud in my ears, and it galloped faster than it ever had before. I gasped, my back arching as I registered the pain. It was _worse._ My fingers and toes were free of the fire, but it seemed like it was gathering in my chest. I whimpered, hands flying up to claw at my chest, to do anything that would relieve some of the pain. 

“No you don’t, Beau.” A voice whispered, warm arms wrapping around me to trap my hands. I moaned in pain, chest heaving as I struggled to breath. More time passed.

I got stronger.

I could feel the control of my body come back to me in increments, and those increments were my first markers of the time passing. 

“It hurts, Jake, please make it stop…” I cried, writhing against him, trying to escape his searingly hot hold. He ignored what I said, still trapping me against him.

Though the fire did not decrease one tiny degree—in fact, I began to develop a new capacity for experiencing it, a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through my veins—I discovered that I could think around it.

My hearing got clearer and clearer, and I could count the frantic, pounding beats of my heart to mark the time.

I could count the shallow breaths that gasped through my teeth.

I could count the low, even breaths that came from somewhere close beside me.

These moved slowest, so I concentrated on them. They meant the most time passing. More even than a clock’s pendulum, those breaths pulled me through the burning seconds toward the end.

Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred seventeen and a half seconds later, the pain changed.

On the good-news side of things, it started to fade from my fingertips and toes.

Fading slowly, but at least it was doing something new. This had to be it. The pain was on its way out.…

And then the bad news. The fire in my throat wasn’t the same as before. I wasn’t only on fire, but I was now parched, too. Dry as bone. So thirsty. Burning fire, and burning thirst…

Also bad news: The fire inside my heart got hotter.

How was that possible?

My heartbeat, already too fast, picked up—the fire drove its rhythm to a new frantic pace.

“Sam,” Jacob called. His voice was low but clear. I knew that Sam would hear it, if he were in or near the house.

The fire retreated from my palms, leaving them blissfully pain-free and cool. But it retreated to my heart, which blazed hot as the sun and beat at a furious new speed.

Sam entered the room, another wolf shifter at his side. Their footsteps were so distinct, I could even tell that Sam was on the right, and a foot ahead of the other one. I kept my eyes clenched shut.

“Listen,” Jacob told them.

The loudest sound in the room was my frenzied heart, pounding to the rhythm of the fire.

And then—oh!

My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. The pain was enough to stun me. My back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging me upward by my heart. My mouth opened in a silent scream.

It became a battle inside me—my sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire.

Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible; my heart galloped toward its last beat.

The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more.

For a moment, the absence of pain was all I could comprehend.

And then I opened my eyes and gazed above me in wonder.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited.

Everything was so clear.

Sharp. Defined.

I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above. In front of it, I could see the dust motes in the air, the sides the light touched, and the dark sides, distinct and separate. They spun like little planets, moving around each other in a celestial dance.

The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock; the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex. The action felt wrong. I considered, and realized the problem was that there was no relief tied to the action. I didn’t need the air. My lungs weren’t waiting for it. They reacted indifferently to the influx.

I did not need the air, but I liked it. In it, I could taste the room around me—taste the lovely dust motes, the mix of the stagnant air mingling with the flow of slightly cooler air from the open door. Taste a lush whiff of silk. Taste a faint hint of something warm but musky, making me crinkle my nose in disgust, something that should be moist, but wasn’t.…

I heard the sound of three others, breathing in the room with me. I also heard a faint, thudding rhythm, with a voice shouting angrily to the beat.

Rap music? I was mystified for a moment, and then the sound faded away like a car passing by with the windows rolled down.

With a start, I realized that this could be exactly right. Could I hear all the way to the freeway?

I didn’t realize someone was holding my hand until whoever it was squeezed it lightly. Like it had before to hide the pain, my body locked down again in surprise. The hand was _hot._ It felt like it should have burned me, but there was no pain. I felt the blood pumping through their veins. 

After that first frozen second of shock, my body responded to the unfamiliar touch in a way that shocked me even more. Air hissed up my throat, spitting through my clenched teeth with a low, menacing sound like a swarm of bees. Before the sound was out, my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown. I flipped off my back in a spin so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur—but it did not. I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them.

So by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively—about a sixteenth of a second later—I already understood what had startled me, and that I had overreacted.

Oh. Of course. Jacob would feel hot to me. I was the ice cold temperature of a vampire.

I held my pose for an eighth of a second longer, adjusting to the scene before me. Jacob was leaning across the bed that had been my pyre, his hand reached out toward me, his expression anxious.

Some instinct to defend had been triggered, and I automatically searched for any sign of danger.

Sam, an unfamiliar man, and Jacob waited cautiously against the far wall by the door, Sam and Jacob in the front. Like there was danger. My nostrils flared, searching for the threat. I could smell nothing out of place. That faint scent of something delicious—but marred by the musky scent—tickled my throat again, setting it to aching and burning.

At this point, the other part of my attention had ascertained that there was no danger here besides myself, and I automatically straightened out of my crouch; almost a whole second had passed since I’d been on the bed. I noticed that the covers were twisted and thrown on the floor. The sheets were wrinkled and sweat stained.

I was momentarily preoccupied by the way my body moved. The instant I’d considered standing erect, I was already straight. There was no brief fragment of time in which the action occurred; change was instantaneous, almost as if there was no movement at all.

“Beau?” Jacob asked in a low, calming tone, but the worry in his voice layered my name with tension. My eyes flickered back to his face. 

“How do you feel, Beau?” Sam asked, warily. His eyes were trained on my face. I felt a flash of inexplicable anger at that, but it was gone in an instant.

I considered that for a sixty-fourth of a second.

“Overwhelmed. There’s so much. . . .” I trailed off, listening to the deep bell-tone of my voice again. It startled the others too, and they all shifted on their feet uneasily. 

“But I feel like me. Sort of. I didn’t expect that.”

A look of relief bloomed over Jacob’s face. Sam relaxed slightly. But only slightly. 

“You are quite controlled,” Sam mused. “More so than I expected, even with forewarned knowledge of this.”

I thought about the wild mood swings, the difficulty concentrating, and whispered, “I’m not sure about that.”

“Beau, you need to hunt.” Jacob said gently. 

Until he’d mentioned it, the thirst actually wasn’t unmanageable. There was so much room in my head. A separate part of my brain was keeping tabs on the burn in my throat, almost like a reflex. The way my old brain had handled breathing and blinking.

But Jacob’s words brought the burn to the forefront of my mind.

Suddenly, the dry ache was all I could think about, and the more I thought about it, the more it hurt. 

My hand flew up to cup my throat, like I could smother the flames from the outside. The skin of my neck was strange beneath my fingers. So smooth it was somehow soft, though it was hard as stone, too.

Me? Hunt? But… how? I didn’t know what to do.

The wolves read the alarm on my face and Sam stepped forward. On instinct, I took a step back quickly. He paused, before speaking. 

“I’m sure you’ll do fine Beau. Just follow your instincts. We’ll be watching you to make sure no humans are harmed.” I let out a breath of relief at that. I nodded at him, and made my way outside. 

The only way into the forest was across the river. I politely waited for the wolves to shift before watching them leap across it. Their muscles bunched and twisted as they did. Graceful and wild. Beautiful. I shook my head slightly and cleared my thoughts. The wolves watched me, waiting.

I backed up five paces, just in case, and took a deep breath.

Suddenly, I was anxious again. Not about falling or getting hurt—I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.

It had come on slowly, but I could feel it now—the raw, massive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn’t take me very long.

The objects around me—the trees, the shrubs, the rocks… the house—had all begun to look very fragile.

I took a deep breath and ran for the river.

It took only one long bound to reach the water’s edge.

Just an eighty-fourth of a second, and yet it was plenty of time—my eyes and my mind moved so quickly that one step was enough. It was simple to position my right foot just so against the flat stone and exert the adequate pressure to send my body wheeling up into the air. I was paying more attention to aim than force, and I erred on the amount of power necessary—but at least I didn’t err on the side that would have gotten me wet. The fifty yard width was slightly too easy a distance. . . .

It was a strange, giddy, electrifying thing, but a short thing. An entire second had yet to pass, and I was across. I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.

It was fabulous.

I laughed, full and deep from my chest, relishing in this power and speed for a moment. Over the sound of my delighted laughter, I could hear the wolves racing to find me. My jump had been twice as long as theirs. When they reached my tree, their eyes were wide. I leaped nimbly from the branch to their side, soundlessly landing again on the balls of my feet.

I shrugged at them, before turning towards the forest in front of me again. I took off into the trees.

It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I passed.

The wind of my speed blew through my hair and ruffled my clothes, and, though I knew it shouldn’t, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn’t feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn’t feel like caressing feathers.

The forest was much more alive than I’d ever known—small creatures whose existence I’d never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after we passed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to our scent than humans seemed to. 

Certainly, it’d had the opposite effect on me.

I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly. I waited for the burn to begin in my muscles, but my strength only seemed to increase as I grew accustomed to my stride. My leaping bounds stretched longer, and soon they were trying to keep up with me. 

My naked feet touched the ground so infrequently now it felt more like flying than running.

As soon as I’d started to think about the dry burn in my throat, it was all I could think about. Definitely getting worse. My mouth felt like four o’clock on a June afternoon in Death Valley.

I scanned the trees impatiently. Now that I had given the thirst my attention, it seemed to taint every other thought in my head, leaking into the more pleasant thoughts of running and… scorching thirst. I couldn’t get away from it.

I let my ears range outward, seeking something different than the small hum of life that surrounded me. There was an open space near us—the wind had a different sound across the exposed grass— and a small creek, with a rocky bed. And there, near the noise of the water, was the splash of lapping tongues, the loud thudding of heavy hearts, pumping thick streams of blood. . . .

It felt like the sides of my throat had sucked closed.

Whatever I was hearing smelt different than the wolves. More appealing. I paused, listening to the animals drink from the brook and to the wolves watching me from a distance. 

I thought about it, I listened and breathed in the scent. Another bout of baking thirst intruded on my awareness, and suddenly the warm, tangy odor wasn’t quite so objectionable. At least it would be something hot and wet in my desiccated mouth. My eyes snapped open.

I let myself drift with the scent, barely aware of my movement as I ghosted down the incline to the narrow meadow where the stream flowed. My body shifted forward automatically into a low crouch as I hesitated at the fern-fringed edge of the trees. I could see a big buck, two dozen antler points crowning his head, at the stream’s edge, and the shadow-spotted shapes of the four others heading eastward into forest at a leisurely pace.

I centered myself around the scent of the male, the hot spot in his shaggy neck where the warmth pulsed strongest. Only thirty yards—two or three bounds— between us. I tensed myself for the first leap.

The wind shifted then, and I caught the scent of something else. It was more appealing, but still the scent of animal. So I took off in that direction. 

The vegetation thinned as we climbed higher; the scent of pitch and resin grew more powerful, as did the trail I followed—it was a warm scent, sharper than the smell of the elk and more appealing. A few seconds more and I could hear the muted padding of immense feet, so much subtler than the crunch of hooves. 

The sound was up—in the branches rather than on the ground. Automatically I darted into the boughs as well, gaining the strategic higher position, halfway up a towering silver fir.

The soft thud of paws continued stealthily beneath me now; the rich scent was very close. My eyes pinpointed the movement linked with the sound, and I saw the tawny hide of the great cat slinking along the wide branch of a spruce just down and to the left of my perch. He was big—easily four times my mass. His eyes were intent on the ground beneath; the cat hunted, too. I caught the smell of something smaller, bland next to the aroma of my prey, cowering in brush below the tree. The lion’s tail twitched spasmodically as he prepared to spring.

With a light bound, I sailed through the air and landed on the lion’s branch. He felt the shiver of the wood and whirled, shrieking surprise and defiance. He clawed the space between us, his eyes bright with fury. Half-crazed with thirst, I ignored the exposed fangs and the hooked claws and launched myself at him, knocking us both to the forest floor.

It wasn’t much of a fight.

His raking claws could have been caressing fingers for all the impact they had on my skin. His teeth could find no purchase against my shoulder or my throat. His weight was nothing. My teeth unerringly sought his throat, and his instinctive resistance was pitifully feeble against my strength. 

My jaws locked easily over the precise point where the heat flow concentrated.

It was effortless as biting into butter. My teeth were steel razors; they cut through the fur and fat and sinews like they weren’t there.

The flavor was wrong, but the blood was hot and wet and it soothed the ragged, itching thirst as I drank in an eager rush. The cat’s struggles grew more and more feeble, and his screams choked off with a gurgle. The warmth of the blood radiated throughout my whole body, heating even my fingertips and toes.

The lion was finished before I was. The thirst flared again when he ran dry, and I shoved his carcass off my body in disgust. How could I still be thirsty after all that?

I wrenched myself erect in one quick move. Standing, I realized I was a bit of a mess. I wiped my face off on the back of my arm and tried to fix the t-shirt that barely hung onto me in tatters. The claws that had been so ineffectual against my skin had had more success with the thin cotton.

I ignored the watching eyes of the wolves and set out to find something else to feed on. I found a large herd of mule deer as we ran back toward home. I brought down a large buck, making nearly as much of a mess as I had with the lion. I chased the scattered and terrified herd. I took down two doe before stopping. I looked towards the wolves, and spoke. 

“I’m done, I think.” I felt very full, sort of sloshy, even. I wasn’t sure how much more liquid would fit into my body. But the burn in my throat was only muted. 

The wolves led the way back to the house but I didn’t need help. I could smell it, and my memory was far better. They shifted back, all except for Jacob, who took off to the trees. I tilted my head in confusion as I stared off after him. 

“He’s collecting some clothes for you.” Sam said, from behind me. Ah. My clothes were torn and covered in blood and mud. Of course. I nodded. 

“How are you?” Sam asked, something almost like pity in his voice. My lips twisted into a frown, as I continued to stare off into the trees. 

“Weird.” I answered, my voice showing my displeasure.

“My throat burns. I’m a lot stronger. Faster. I can see everything so much more clearly. I can _feel_ the power in me. But I feel dangerous. One wrong move and I could hurt you…” I said quietly, crossing my arms over my almost bare chest. 

“Would you like to see yourself…?” Sam asked hesitantly. I paused, thinking it over. I nodded. Sam led me back into the house and into the bathroom. He uncovered the mirror, and waited for my reaction.

My first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Carlisle or Emmett. He was fluid even in stillness, and his flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of his dark, thick hair. His limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl.

My second reaction was horror.

Who was he? At first glance, I couldn’t find my face anywhere in the smooth, perfect planes of his features.

And his eyes! Though I’d known to expect them, his eyes still sent a thrill of terror through me.

All the while I studied and reacted, his face was perfectly composed, a carving of a god, showing nothing of the turmoil roiling inside me. And then his full lips moved.

“The eyes?” I whispered, unwilling to say my eyes. Sam’s face twisted, as he looked down, unwilling to make eye contact. I stared into the crimson eyes in the mirror for a long time. My face was slightly twisted in horror, but that didn’t make me less attractive. Just unapproachable. 

I startled when I heard Jacob’s voice downstairs. I must’ve been staring for a long time. I finally looked away, and covered the mirror up. I left the room without a word to Sam. Seeing Jacob properly again made me sad in an inexpiable way. Last time I had seen him, he had told me that we couldn’t be friends anymore. Now we both were creatures other than human. I felt a pang of longing. I wished I could go back to how it used to be. 

Then he smiled his familiar smile, the smile of a kindred spirit, and I was sure our friendship was intact. It was just like before, when we were hanging out in his homemade garage, just two friends killing time. Easy and normal. 

He strode towards me and enveloped me in a searingly hot hug. And while goosebumps erupted over his skin, he showed no reaction to how my skin must now be as cold as ice. I sighed and relaxed into the familiar embrace.

“I’m sorry, Beau. We didn’t get to you in time. If we had been even a few seconds earlier, you would still be human.” His voice was dripping with guilt and pain. I pulled back, looking him sternly in the eye.

“Jacob Black. This is not your fault. It was that vampires fault. And slightly mine for being in the woods. You do not get to blame yourself.” His eyes widened at my firm tone, before an amused smile spread across his face. 

“Sure, sure Beau.” He relented, before we finally broke the hug.

His grin widened, and he shuddered slightly. “I gotta say it, Beau. You’re a freak show.”

I grinned back, falling easily into the old pattern. This was a side of him I understood.

“You’re right. The eyes are really something, aren’t they?”

“Super-creepy. But it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Gee—thanks for the amazing compliment!”

He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. You still look like you—sort of. Maybe it’s not the look so much as… you are Beau. I didn’t think it would feel like you were still here.” He smiled at me again without a trace of pain or grief anywhere in his face. 

Then he chuckled and said, “Anyway, I guess I’ll get used to the eyes soon enough.”

“You will?” I asked, confused. It was wonderful that we were still friends, but it wasn’t like we’d be spending much time together. 

“Yes. We’ll protect you. You had no choice in this.” Jake’s solemn face was back. “And anyway, your eyes will change to gold soon enough, I think.” I nodded, ignoring the pain blossoming at the words. I would look in the mirror and see eyes similar to once-before family who had abandoned me. 

Sam cleared his throat, breaking us out of the little bubble of privacy we had made. Both of our eyes focused on him. 

“There are conditions though. We will allow you in on the treaty, but there are rules.” I nodded, that was reasonable. 

“No going on our land. No turning a human. No harming any human. Just because we helped you does not mean we won’t take you down if you decide to feed from humans.” I shuddered, remembering a vague memory of them tearing into Laurent.

“Of course.” I agreed, then froze.

Charlie. Where does he think I am? He must be worried sick. 

“Charlie?” I asked, my voice low and small. Sam’s eyes softened as he looked away. 

“The search part found your jacket, the one Jake used to try to help with the bleeding on your neck. It’s assumed that some animal got to you.” My heart plummeted. Charlie must be in so much pain. Venom welled in my eyes but didn’t fall. 

“Oh.” Was all I said. I turned away from them and looked outside. I was all Charlie had had. Regret at hiking to the meadow filled me. If I had just stayed home or waited for Jake, then I would still be human. Charlie would still have had me. 

I stayed frozen like that, unseeing, as I thought over everything. I was aware when Jake and Paul left, and Sam collected some pillows and blankets and settled down on the now uncovered couch. I was aware of the longing and sorrowful look Jake sent my way just before he took off. I stayed still though. I stayed still as the sky transformed into color. I observed the setting sun in silence. I watched the sky darken. I listened to Sam breath as he slept. I watched the sky lighten. Still, I remained unmoving. 

Sam started stirring around an hour after the sun rose. He stood up and stretched, back and joints popping loudly as he groaned. He watched me for a moment, then approached. 

“Beau.” He said. I didn’t acknowledge him. I couldn’t, not when my mind was a whirlwind. Not when I wanted to scream and rage and tear down the forest. Not when I wanted to destroy everything around me. And I could. I wouldn’t move a muscle until I had my mind and emotions under control.

After a while Sam left my side. He bounded outside and shifted. He dashed towards the forest and left me alone. That’s when I sunk to the ground. I pressed my fist to my mouth, trying to muffle the heart wrenching sobs that ripped their way up my throat. 

Once again I was in the Cullen home. But not one of them were here. They had left me months ago. Yet I could still feel the gaping hole in my chest. When Edward left, when they all left, they took my heart with them. It was like Edward and reached into my chest and plucked it right out, leaving me empty. Leaving me alone. 

I took a moment to run through all of my human life memories. It was hard. Like I was squinting and looking through muddy water. But I replayed them all. Even the ones that caused pain to flare up in my chest. Even the ones with _him._ Being with him had been the happiest time of my life. Even if it had ended too soon and so suddenly. Even if he didn’t want me anymore. 

Replaying the memories of Charlie made me curl into a ball as pain racked through my body. I clenched my teeth to block any pained noises from coming out. I thought I had wanted this earlier. When I had Edward and it was on my terms. But now he’s gone and I’m alone, a vampire, and alone. 

For a brief moment, the thought of tracking down the Cullen’s entered my mind. I immediately pushed it away. Edward didn't want me. Being a vampire didn't change that. And the others had left without a goodbye. Surely they didn’t want me either. 

I had composed myself when Sam returned. Jake was with him. I was now sitting on the floor against the wall, eyes closed. I inhaled and wrinkled my nose when the warm musky scent of the wolves reached me. It faintly tickled my throat, but it was easily ignored. 

“There's another vampire here…” I caught the murmured words and immediately shot up, meeting them on the porch. 

“Another vampire?” I questioned, rigid with stress. “Who? What do they look like? Do you know why they're here?” I shot my questions off quickly, so quickly that to a human it wouldn’t even be heard. Hope bloomed in my chest, but I quickly smothered it. They would recognize a Cullen. Sam rolled his shoulders, face creased in worry. 

“Not sure. We only caught sight of her once. She knows to avoid us, dances between the Cullen and our territory. She ran into a search party, Harry was there. He had a heart attack...” He revealed, and I covered my mouth in horror. 

“Leah and Seth phased at the news.” Heavy sorrow weighed down my heart. My dad would have to deal with two funerals.

“What do you think the red-head leech wants?” Jake asked Sam, and I froze into solid marble. _Red-head._ The words rang through my head. 

“Beau? Are you okay?” Jake asked, once he noticed my unnatural stillness and my face frozen in shock. 

“Red-head? Are you sure?” I demanded, anxious energy filling through me. Sam stepped forward at my words. 

“What do you know?” It was more of an order than a question, but I brushed it off. 

“A while ago, I was watching the C-Cullens play baseball. But a nomadic coven was in the area and heard us. One of them, James, was a tracker. They fed off of humans. He caught my scent and made it a game. Remember when I took off to Phoenix and got into that accident?” I asked, and Jake’s eyes widened in horror. I held out my arm, revealing the crescent scare that stayed even with my changing. 

“James tricked me, made me think he had my mom. So I went to him. He didn’t have my mom. He filmed it. He hurt me pretty bad. He bit me, but Ed-” I choked on his name. “But the venom was sucked out. So I didn’t turn. James was killed by the Cullens. But his mate, Victoria, managed to get away.” Understanding dawned in their eyes. 

“The vampire who turned me, he was the third member of their coven. Victoria must be after me. I’m not sure if she knows that I’m not human anymore.” I murmured, thinking through it. 

“Maybe I can help chase her? Let her see for herself? Maybe once she sees that I’m not prey anymore, she’ll leave us alone.” I could see Sam mull it over in his head. Jake’s face was tense, as if he didn’t want me anywhere near Victoria. But he held his tongue and for that I was glad. I’m no longer a helpless human. 

“Alright. You still need to shower and change and then we’ll head out.” Sam’s words reminded me that I had never cleaned myself up after my hunt. I grimaced, wrinkling my nose. I scooped up the clothes Jake had left behind for me and made my way to the bathroom. 

I left the mirror covered. 

I turned the shower as hot as it would go and shed my clothes. I folded my pants and underwear, but my t-shirt was unsalvageable. I balled it up and set it to the side. Stepping into the shower was familiar. The hot water was pleasant on my cool skin, and the steam swirled all around me. I stood there, letting the blood and mud wash off of me. I watched it mix with the water, before flowing down the drain. 

The shower pleasantly muffled my hearing, making me feel more human. A flash of regret washed through me. If only I didn’t go into the woods. If only I didn’t chase the memories of him. If only. I ignored the ache in my chest and quickly washed my hair. I thought briefly about how I would need some soap later as I stepped out. 

I toweled myself down with a lone towel I found under the sink and ran my fingers through my hair. It would have to do until I could get some toiletries of my own. I pulled on the slightly oversized t-shirt that smelled like Jake, and the pair of cut off shorts that must’ve belonged to a younger member, one built slighter than the others. 

When I padded barefoot down the stairs, Sam immediately stood up from his seated position on the couch. Despite their disgust with being in the Cullen’s home, they’ve started to get used to it. The house had started smelling more and more of the wolves. 

“If you let me know your sizes, I can buy some clothes for you. Just write it down somewhere and give it to me.” If I had been human, my cheeks would have been in flames. I smiled softly at him, appreciation curling in my chest. 

“Thank you Sam. For everything you’ve done for me.” At my words he cleared his throat, almost as awkward with compliments as my dad. It made me smile fondly at him, as the grief weighed my heart. 

“I’m really fine though, so no rush. Being barefoot is comfortable.” I let him know, crossing the room to stand between Embry and Jake. Quil stood near Sam. Jared and Paul were with Seth and Leah. Sam nodded at me and they continued the conversation they were having while I showered. 

“So Jared, Embry, and Quil will be on Quileute land, Jake, Paul, Beau and I will be on the Cullen’s side. In a bit, Leah and Seth will be with Embry. We’ll patrol that way unless I say otherwise.” Suddenly Sam fell silent, his head tilted upwards as he smelled the air. Low growls were released, but they faded. I smelt it too. Something sweet and familiar. The door slowly opened, and the small form of Alice stepped through. 

“Beau?” She asked. There was a strange mingling of relief and confusion in her voice. I sucked in a breath of air and flew to her side, pulling her in a hug that lifted her feet off the ground. I locked my arms around her, gasping to inhale as much of the scent of her skin as possible. It wasn't like anything else—not floral or spice, citrus or musk. No perfume in the world could compare. My human memory hadn't done it justice.

I didn't notice when the gasping turned into something else—I only realized I was sobbing when Alice dragged me to the living room couch and pulled me into her. She rubbed my back in a gentle rhythm, waiting for me to get control of myself. She ignored the wolves.

“Sorry,” I said, pulling away and collecting myself.

“How is this possible? I saw you die. Charlie’s having a funeral. Would you like to explain to me how you're alive?” Her voice asked, shrill and confused, yet a smile was lifting her lips. 

Alice shook her head, not even letting me answer. "I told him this would happen, but he didn't believe me. “Beau promised,” her voice imitated his so perfectly that I froze in shock while the pain ripped through my torso. 

"'Don't be looking for his future, either,'" she continued to quote him. '"We've done enough damage."

"But just because I'm not looking, doesn't mean I don't see" she went on. "I wasn't keeping tabs on you, I swear, Beau. It's just that I'm already attuned to you… when I saw you and Laurent, I didn't think, I just got on a plane. I knew I would be too late, but I couldn't do nothing. And then I get here, thinking maybe I could help Charlie somehow, and I catch your scent." She shook her head, this time in confusion. Her voice was strained. "I saw him bite you, and I waited and waited but I saw nothing else. I thought he had killed you. Do you have any idea what Edward—"

I cut her off then, as soon as she said his name. I'd let her go on, even after I realized the misunderstanding she was under, just to hear the perfect bell tone of her voice. But it was time to interrupt.

"It's true that I probably would have died if the pack hadn't been there. Well, okay, there's no probably about it. But they did, and they took me here. How come you didn't see that?"

She frowned in perplexity. "They saved you?" She eyed the wolves, nose lifted as she scented the air.

"Yes. Jacob saved me."

I watched curiously as an enigmatic range of emotions flitted across her face. Something was bothering her—her imperfect vision? But I wasn't sure. Then she deliberately leaned in and sniffed my shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

Alice nodded, ignoring my question, seeming preoccupied.

"What?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm not sure what it means."

"Well, I'm not dead, at least." My voice was heavy though. 

She rolled her eyes. "He was a fool to think you could survive alone. I've never seen anyone so prone to life-threatening idiocy."

"I survived," I pointed out.

She shot me a look. “Not as a human, Beau.”

She continued mulling over her gift. "That explains the smell. But does it explain what I didn't see?" She frowned, her porcelain forehead creasing.

"The smell, yeah, sorry about that. I guess the house does smell kinda like them now," I said reluctantly. I didn’t notice it much anymore.

"You smell awful," she said absently, still frowning.

"I guess you weren't with Carlisle the last time there were werewolves here in Forks?"

"No. I hadn't found him yet." Alice was still lost in thought. Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she turned to stare at me with a shocked expression. "Your best friend is a werewolf?"

I nodded sheepishly, shooting Jake a glance. He looked smug.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Not long," I said, my voice sounding defensive. "He's only been a werewolf for just a few weeks."

She glowered at me. "A young werewolf? Even worse! Edward was right—you're a magnet for danger. A whole pack? Weren't you supposed to be staying out of trouble?"

"There's nothing wrong with werewolves," I grumbled, stung by her critical tone. Sam and them fought back smiles at my tone.

"Until they lose their tempers." She shook her head sharply from side to side. "Leave it to you, Beau. Anyone else would be better off when the vampires left town. But you have to start hanging out with the first monsters you can find."

I didn't want to argue with Alice—I was still trembling with joy that she was really, truly here, that I could touch her marble skin and hear her wind-chime voice—but she was insulting my friends.

"No, Alice, the vampires didn't really leave—not all of them, anyway. That's the whole trouble. If it weren't for the werewolves, I would be dead. Or turned and being hunted by Victoria alone-”

"Victoria?" she hissed. 

I nodded, a teensy bit alarmed by the expression in her black eyes. I pointed at my chest. "Danger magnet, remember?"

She shook her head again. "Tell me everything—start at the beginning."

I glossed over the beginning, skipping the motorcycles and the voices, but telling her everything else right up to today's events. The wolves remained silent. Alice didn't like my thin explanation about boredom and hiking, so I hurried through it and through my turning. Her eyes narrowed almost to slits at that part. It was strange to see her look so… so dangerous—like a vampire. Like me now. 

She listened to my story without interrupting. Occasionally, she would shake her head, and the crease in her forehead deepened until it looked like it was carved permanently into the marble of her skin. She didn't speak and, finally, I fell quiet, struck again by the grief at leaving Charlie. I thought of Charlie; what condition would he be in?

"Our leaving didn't do you any good at all, did it?" Alice murmured.

I laughed once—it was a slightly hysterical and bitter sound. "That was never the point, though, was it? It's not like you left for my benefit." Jake shifted, looking like he wanted to get in between Alice and I. He had witnessed how their leaving affected me first hand.

Alice scowled at the floor for a moment. "Well… I guess I acted impulsively today. I probably shouldn't have assumed you were dead."

Her voice sounded like she regretted getting on that plane. My stomach dropped. 

"Don't go, Alice," I whispered. My fingers locked around her small wrists.

"Please don't leave me."

Her eyes opened wider. "All right," she said, enunciating each word with slow precision. "I'm not going anywhere. Take a deep breath." I snorted at her wording, breaking the tense atmosphere I had created. Jake tried to muffle his snickers. I’ve learned to joke around a little over the past couple days with Jake over my undead condition. 

She watched my face while I composed myself. She waited till I was calmer to comment.

"You look like hell, Beau. Even for a vampire."

"I did get turned against my will," I reminded her. I ignored Jake’s fists clenching.

"It goes deeper than that. You're a mess."

I flinched. "Look, I'm doing my best."

"What do you mean?"

"It hasn't been easy. I'm working on it."

She frowned. "I told him," she said to herself.

"Alice," I sighed. "What did you think you were going to find? I mean, besides me dead? Did you expect to find me skipping around and whistling show tunes? You know me better than that."

"I do. But I hoped."

"Then I guess I don't have the corner on the idiocy market."

"Beau. What are we going to do with you?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I really have been trying my hardest."

"I believe you."

It was silent. The wolves were trying to give us privacy. But I knew they were listening.

"Does—does he…" I took a deep breath. It was harder to say his name out loud, even though I was able to think it now. "Does Edward know you're here?" I couldn't help asking. It was my pain, after all.

"No."

There was only one way that could be true. "He's not with Carlisle and Esme?"

"He checks in every few months."

"Oh." He must still be out enjoying his distractions. I focused my curiosity on a safer topic. "You said you flew here… Where did you come from?"

"I was in Denali. Visiting Tanya's family."

"Is Jasper here? Did he come with you?"

She shook her head. "He didn't approve of my interfering. We promised…" she trailed off. 

Alice spoke quietly with Sam and Jake some time later. I was staring out the window again, watching the forest. Despite my reluctance, I couldn’t help but to listen in on their conversation once I heard my name. 

"How bad was it, when we left? Do you know?" Alice asked softly.

Jake sighed. "Real bad."

"Tell me about it. I want to know exactly what happened when we left."

"I talked to Charlie about it, once we began hanging out again," Jake began slowly. "He didn't know what to do. That first week—he told me he thought he was going to have to hospitalize him. He wouldn't eat or drink, he wouldn't move. Dr. Gerandy was throwing around words like 'catatonic,'...”

"He snapped out of it though?"

"Charlie said he had his mom, Renee, come to take him to Florida. But when they started packing his clothes, he woke up with a vengeance. Boy, Charlie said, he flew into a fury. He apparently threw his clothes everywhere and shouted that they couldn't make him leave, and he did seem to get better at first…"

Jake trailed off. It was hard listening to this, knowing how much pain I'd caused Charlie.

"But?" Alice prompted.

"He went back to school and work, he ate and slept and did his homework. He answered when someone asked him a direct question. But he was… empty. His eyes were blank. There were lots of little things—he wouldn't listen to music anymore. He didn't read; he wouldn't be in the same room when the TV was on, not that he watched it so much before. I finally figured it out—he was avoiding everything that might remind him of… him.”

"He had horrible nightmares. Charlie told me that he would wake up screaming…” 

Sam broke into it. “The day you left, Edward left him in the forest. When he said goodbye. Beau tired to follow him and was missing for hours. Charlie finally called Billy and I found him, frozen half to death, in shock.” I swallowed, squeezing my eyes shut. They didn’t notice my reactions. 

“I have to ask you something," Sam said with the authority of the alpha.

Alice was calm. "Go ahead."

"Are the rest of you coming back?"

Alice answered in a soft tone. "Jasper, my mate, is the only one who knows I’m here. Edward doesn’t know. The last time I spoke with him, he was in South America."

I stiffened as I heard this new information, and tuned it out. I was torn between wanting to know more and not wanting to think about him at all. Soon though, most of the wolves left. It was getting dark and most had families to return home to. All that remained was Jake. Sam mentioned that he was also sending a new wolf, Leah, over. 

Alice and I continued talking, and Jake eventually sat beside me, and I unconsciously curled into him a little, relishing in his warmth. She never spoke about leaving, and I didn't ask her. I knew it was inevitable, but I put it out of my mind.

Instead, we talked about her family—all but one.

Carlisle was working nights in Ithaca and teaching part time at Cornell. Esme was restoring a seventeenth century house, a historical monument, in the forest north of the city. Emmett and Rosalie had gone to Europe for a few months on another honeymoon, but they were back now. Jasper was at Cornell, too, studying philosophy this time. And Alice had been doing some personal research, concerning the information I'd accidentally uncovered for her last spring. She'd successfully tracked down the asylum where she'd spent the last years of her human life. The life she had no memory of.

"My name was Mary Alice Brandon," she told me quietly. "I had a little sister named Cynthia. Her daughter—my niece—is still alive in Biloxi."

"Did you find out why they put you in… that place?" What would drive parents to that extreme? Even if their daughter saw visions of the future…

She just shook her head, her topaz eyes thoughtful. "I couldn't find much about them. I went through all the old newspapers on microfiche. My family wasn't mentioned often; they weren't part of the social circle that made the papers. My parents' engagement was there, and Cynthia's." The name fell uncertainly from her tongue. "My birth was announced… and my death. I found my grave. I also filched my admissions sheet from the old asylum archives. The date on the admission and the date on my tombstone are the same."

I didn't know what to say, and, after a short pause, Alice moved on to lighter topics. I could see Jake softening towards her, feeling for her now that he knew some of her backstory. I listened too eagerly to even the most trivial news. She never mentioned the one I was most interested in, and for that I was grateful. It was enough to listen to the stories of the family I'd once dreamed of belonging to. During this chat, I heard the new wolf arrive. She stayed in her wolf form, doing laps around the house slowly. 

Suddenly, Alice froze. Her eyes were far away and I watched in silence as she had her vision. 

"Beau," she choked. Her eyes were dazed and far away, her face drawn and whiter than bone. Her slim body trembled to an inner turmoil.

"Alice, what's wrong?" I questioned. I put my hands on her face, trying to calm her.

Her eyes focused on mine abruptly, wide with pain.

"Edward," was all she whispered.

My mind labored, unable to make sense of Alice's bleak face and how it could possibly relate to Edward, while my body was as still and hard as stone. 

"Beau? Beau, snap out of it. We have to hurry." But I couldn’t make my body react.

"Alice?" My voice was weak. "What happened?" I asked, even though I didn't want to hear.

"I don't know," she suddenly wailed. "What is he thinking?!" Jake was watching all of this silently, face tense as he tried to understand.

I labored to pull myself together despite the instinct to hide, to get away from this panic and pain. I realized it was Jacob's arm I was gripping for balance. I loosened my grip, feeling the comforting warmth beneath my hand.

Alice was pulling a small silver phone from her bag when my eyes relocated her. Her fingers dialed the numbers so fast they were a blur.

"Rose, I need to talk to Carlisle now." Her voice whipped through the words. "Fine, as soon as he's back. No, I'll be on a plane. Look, have you heard anything from Edward?"

Alice paused now, listening with an expression that grew more appalled every second. Her mouth opened into a little O of horror, and the phone shook in her hand.

"Why?" she gasped. "Why would you do that, Rosalie?"

Whatever the answer was, it made her jaw tighten in anger. Her eyes flashed and narrowed.

"Well, you're wrong on both counts, though, Rosalie, so that would be a problem, don't you think?" she asked acidly. "Yes, that's right. He's absolutely fine—well he’s not fine but he’s alive. I was wrong… It's a long story… But you're wrong about that part, too, that's why I'm calling… Yes, that's exactly what I saw."

Alice's voice was very hard and her lips were pulled back from her teeth. "It's a bit late for that, Rose. Save your remorse for someone who believes it." Alice snapped the phone shut with a sharp twist of her fingers.

Her eyes were tortured as she turned to face me.

"It’s Edward." The words were just a choked whisper. "He thinks you're dead. Rosalie sent him a screenshot of a news article on your death."

My mind started to work again. These words weren't the ones I'd been afraid of, and the relief cleared my head.

"In her defense, she did believe it. They rely on my sight far too much for something that works so imperfectly. But for her to track him down to tell him this! Didn't she realize… or care… ?" Her voice faded away in horror.

Alice looked at me strangely. "You're not upset," she whispered.

“It will all get straightened out. You can call him, someone will tell him… what… really…" I trailed off. Her gaze strangled the words in my throat.

Why was she so panicked? Why was her face twisting now with pity and horror? What was it she had said to Rosalie on the phone just now? Something about what she'd seen… and Rosalie's remorse; Rosalie would never feel remorse for anything that happened to me. But if she'd hurt her family, hurt her brother…

"Beau," Alice whispered. "Edward won't answer my call. He believed her."

"I. Don't. Understand." My mouth framed each word in silence. I couldn't push the air out to actually say the words that would make her explain what that meant.

"He's going to Italy."

It took the length of one heartbeat for me to comprehend.

When Edward's voice came back to me now, it was not the perfect imitation of my delusions. It was just the weak, flat tone of my memories. But the words alone were enough to shred through my chest and leave it gaping open. Words from a time when I would have bet everything that I owned or could borrow on that fact that he loved me.

Well, I wasn't going to live without you, he'd said as we watched Romeo and Juliet die. But I wasn't sure how to do it… I knew Emmett and Jasper would never help… so I was thinking maybe I would go to Italy and do something to provoke the Volturi… You don't irritate them. Not unless you want to die.

Not unless you want to die.

"NO!" The half-shouted denial was so loud after the whispered words, it made us all jump. I realized what she'd seen. "No! No, no, no! He can't! He can't do that!"

"He made up his mind as soon as Rose showed him the article. When he realized he was already too late."

"But he… he left! He didn't want me anymore! What difference does it make now? He knew I would die sometime!"

"I don't think he ever planned to outlive you by long," Alice said quietly.

"How dare he!" I shouted. I was on my feet now, and Jacob rose uncertainly to put himself between Alice and me. I couldn’t take time to appreciate the concern, although misguided. 

"What do we do?" I begged Alice. There had to be something. "Can't we call him? Can Carlisle?"

She was shaking her head. "That was the first thing I tried. He left his phone in a trash can in Rio—someone answered it…" she whispered.

"You said before we had to hurry. Hurry how? Let's do it, whatever it is!"

"Beau, I—I don't think I can ask you to…" She trailed off in indecision.

"Ask me!" I commanded.

She put her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place, her fingers flexing sporadically to emphasize her words. "We may already be too late. I saw him going to the Volturi… and asking to die." We both cringed, and my eyes were suddenly blind. I blinked feverishly at the venom. 

"It all depends on what they choose. I can't see that till they make a decision.”

"But if they say no, and they might—Aro is fond of Carlisle, and wouldn't want to offend him—Edward has a backup plan. They're very protective of their city. If Edward does something to upset the peace, he thinks they'll act to stop him. And he's right. They will."

I stared at her with my jaw clenched in frustration. I'd heard nothing yet that would explain why we were still standing here.

"So if they agree to grant his favor, we're too late. If they say no, and he comes up with a plan to offend them quickly enough, we're too late. If he gives into his more theatrical tendencies… we might have time."

"Let's go!"

"Listen, Beau! Whether we are in time or not, we will be in the heart of the Volturi city. I will be considered his accomplice if he is successful. You will be a newborn vampire surrounded by humans. There's a very good chance that they will eliminate us all."

"This is what's keeping us here?" I asked in disbelief. "I'll go alone if you're afraid." I mentally tabulated what money was left in my account, and wondered if Alice would lend me the rest.

"I'm only afraid of getting you killed."

I snorted in disgust. "I almost get myself killed on a daily basis! I’m stronger now. I can take care of myself. Tell me what I need to do!"

"You sort out the wolves. I'll call the airlines." Suddenly a thought occurred to me. 

"Charlie," I gasped.

Not that my presence was protecting him, but could I leave him here alone to face…

"I'm not going to let anything happen to Charlie." Jacob's low voice was gruff and angry. "Screw the treaty."

I glanced up at him, and he scowled at my panicked expression.

"Hurry, Beau," Alice interrupted urgently. 

"Be careful," Jacob whispered. I wasn't about to waste time arguing with him. 

"Please, please, please take care of Charlie," I said as I dashed back out to the front room. Alice was waiting in the doorway with a bag over her shoulder.

"Do you have your wallet?—you'll need ID. Please tell me you have a passport. I don't have time to forge one." I thanked everything I could that I had brought my wallet, which also had my passport in it.

I nodded and then raced up the stairs, my chest full with gratitude that my mother had wanted to marry Phil on a beach in Mexico. Of course, like all her plans, it had fallen through. But not before I'd made all the practical arrangements I could for her.

I collected everything I had accumulated in Edward’s room. I stuffed my old wallet, a clean T-shirt, and sweatpants into my backpack. I hurled myself back down the stairs. The sense of deja vu was nearly stifling by this point. At least, unlike the last time—when I'd run away from Forks to escape thirsty vampires rather than to find them—I wouldn't have to say goodbye to Charlie in person.

Alice turned for the car, disappearing in her haste. I hurried after her, pausing automatically to turn and lock the door. A hysterical laugh bubbled up my throat but I was able to force it down. The engine of Carlisle's Mercedes purred; the rhythm of the thrumming spiked when Alice revved it impatiently.

I was reminded of Jake’s presence as he bounded out the door after me. What if I never saw him again?

The thought pushed me past the silent tears; a sob broke out from my chest. I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged for one too-short moment, burying my face against his chest. He put his big hand on the back of my hair, as if to hold me there.

"Bye, Jake." I pulled his hand from my hair, and kissed his palm. I couldn't bear to look at his face.

"Sorry," I whispered.

Then I spun and raced for the car. The door on the passenger side was open and waiting. I threw my backpack over the headrest and slid in, slamming the door behind me.

"Take care of Charlie!" I turned to shout out the window, but Jacob was nowhere in sight. As Alice stomped on the gas and—with the tires screeching like human screams—spun us around to face the road, I caught sight of a shred of white near the edge of the trees. A piece of a shoe.


	6. Chapter 6

We made our flight with seconds to spare, and then the true torture began. The scent of the blood flowing beneath everyone’s skin set my throat ablaze. It took all my self control not to get up and tackle the nearest human. Alice kept an iron grip on my arm. 

The plane sat idle on the tarmac while the flight attendants strolled—so casually—up and down the aisle, patting the bags in the overhead compartments to make sure everything fit. The pilots leaned out of the cockpit, chatting with them as they passed. Alice's hand was hard on my shoulder, holding me in my seat while I bounced anxiously up and down trying to let out some of the energy being near humans caused.

"It's faster than running," she reminded me in a low voice. Alice handed me a pair of sunglasses, to cover my crimson eyes.

I just nodded in time with my bouncing and slid them onto my face.

At last the plane rolled lazily from the gate, building speed with a gradual steadiness that tortured me  further. I expected some kind of relief when we achieved liftoff, but my frenzied impatience didn't lessen.

Alice lifted the phone on the back of the seat in front of her before we'd stopped climbing, turning her  back on the stewardess who eyed her with disapproval. Something about my expression stopped the stewardess from coming over to protest.

I tried to tune out what Alice was murmuring to Jasper; I didn't want to hear the words again, but some slipped through.

"I can't be sure, I keep seeing him do different things, he keeps changing his mind… A killing spree  through the city, attacking the guard, lifting a car over his head in the main square… mostly things that would expose them—he knows that's the fastest way to force a reaction…"

"No, you can't." Alice's voice dropped till it was probably inaudible to humans, but I could still hear her clearly. As well as the dozens on heart beats surrounding me.

"Tell Emmett no… Well, go after Emmett and Rosalie and bring them back… Think about it, Jasper. If he sees any of us, what do you think he will do?"

She nodded. "Exactly. I think Beau is the only chance—if there is a chance… I'll do everything that can be done, but prepare Carlisle; the odds aren't good. Especially with Beau being on a plane, as a newborn."

She laughed then, and there was a catch in her voice. "I've thought of that… Yes, I promise." Her voice became pleading. "Don't follow me. I promise, Jasper. One way or another, I'll get out… And I love you."

She hung up, and leaned back in her seat with her eyes closed. "I hate lying to him."

"Tell me everything, Alice," I begged. "I don't understand. Why did you tell Jasper to stop Emmett, why can't they come help us?"

"Two reasons," she whispered, her eyes still closed. "The first I told him. We could try to stop Edward ourselves—if Emmett could get his hands on him, we might be able to stop him long enough to convince him you're alive. But we can't sneak up on Edward. And if he sees us coming for him, he'll just act that much faster. He'll throw a Buiclc through a wall or something, and the Volturi will take him down.

"That's the second reason of course, the reason I couldn't say to Jasper. Because if they're there and the Volturi kill Edward, they'll fight them. Beau." She opened her eyes and stared at me, beseeching. "If there were any chance we could win… if there were a way that the four of us could save my brother by fighting for him, maybe it would be different. But we can't, and, Beau, I can't lose Jasper like that."

I realized why her eyes begged for my understanding. She was protecting Jasper, at our expense, and maybe at Edward's, too. I understood, and I did not think badly of her. I nodded.

"Couldn't Edward hear you, though.'" I asked. "Wouldn't he know, as soon as he heard your thoughts, that I was alive, that there was no point to this?"

Not that there was any justification, either way. I still couldn't believe that he was capable of reacting like this. It made no sense! I remembered with painful clarity his words that day on the sofa, while we  watched Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, one after the other. I wasn't going to live without you, he'd  said, as if it should be such an obvious conclusion. But the words he had spoken in the forest as he'd left me had canceled all that out—forcefully.

"If he were listening," she explained. "But believe it or not, it's possible to lie with your thoughts. If you had died, I would still try to stop him. And I would be thinking 'he's alive, he's alive' as hard as I could. He knows that."

I ground my teeth in mute frustration.

"If there were any way to do this without you, Beau, I wouldn't be endangering you like this. It's very  wrong of me."

"Don't be stupid. I'm the last thing you should be worrying about." I shook my head impatiently. "Tell me what you meant, about hating to lie to Jasper."

She smiled a grim smile. "I promised him I would get out before they killed me, too. It's not something I can guarantee—not by a long shot." She raised her eyebrows, as if willing me to take the danger more seriously.

"Who are these Volturi?" I demanded in a whisper. "What makes them so much more dangerous than Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, and you?" It was hard to imagine something scarier than that.

She took a deep breath, and then abruptly leveled a dark glance over my shoulder. I turned in time to see the man in the aisle seat looking away as if he wasn't listening to us. He appeared to be a businessman, in a dark suit with a power tie and a laptop on his knees. While I stared at him with irritation, he opened the computer and very conspicuously put headphones on.

I leaned closer to Alice on instinct, even though I didn’t need to. Her lips were at my ears as she breathed the story. Her voice was so quiet only me and her could hear.

"I was surprised that you recognized the name," she said. "That you understood so immediately what it meant—when I said he was going to Italy. I thought I would have to explain. How much did Edward tell you?"

"It’s a bit fuzzy, my human memories. He just said they were an old, powerful family—like royalty. That you didn't antagonize them unless you wanted to… die," I whispered. The last word was hard to choke out.

"You have to understand," she said, her voice slower, more measured now. "We Cullens are unique in more ways than you know. It's… abnormal for so many of us to live together in peace. It's the same for Tanya's family in the north, and Carlisle speculates that abstaining makes it easier for us to be civilized, to form bonds based on love rather than survival or convenience. Even James's little coven of three was unusually large—and you saw how easily Laurent left them. Our kind travel alone, or in pairs, as a general rule. Carlisle's family is the biggest in existence, as far as I know, with the one exception. The Volturi.

"There were three of them originally, Aro, Caius, and Marcus."

"I've seen them," I mumbled. "In the picture in Carlisle's study, I think."

Alice nodded. "Two females joined them over time, and the five of them make up the family. I'm not sure, but I suspect that their age is what gives them the ability to live peacefully together. They are well over three thousand years old. Or maybe it's their gifts that give them extra tolerance. Like Edward and I, Aro and Marcus are… talented."

She continued before I could ask. "Or maybe it's just their love of power that binds them together. R oyalty is an apt description."

"But if there are only five—"

"Five that make up the family," she corrected. "That doesn't include their guard."

I took a shallow breath, feeling my throat catch on fire once more. "That sounds… serious."

"Oh, it is," she assured me. "There were nine members of the guard that were permanent, the last time we heard. Others are more… transitory. It changes. And many of them are gifted as well—with formidable gifts, gifts that make what I can do look like a parlor trick. The Volturi chose them for their abilities, physical or otherwise."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it. I didn't think I wanted to know how bad the odds were.

She nodded again, as if she understood exactly what I was thinking. "They don't get into too many  confrontations. No one is stupid enough to mess with them. They stay in their city, leaving only as duty calls."

"Duty?" I wondered.

"Didn't Edward tell you what they do?"

"No," I said, feeling the blank expression on my face.

Alice looked over my head again, toward the businessman, and put her wintry lips back to my ear.

"There's a reason he called them royalty… the ruling class. Over the millennia, they have assumed the position of enforcing our rules—which actually translates to punishing transgressors. They fulfill that duty decisively."

My eyes popped wide with shock. "There are rules?" I asked in a voice that was too loud.

"Shh!"

"Shouldn't somebody have mentioned this to me earlier?" I whispered angrily. "I mean, I wanted to be a… to be one of you! Not so much now, but still. Shouldn't somebody have explained the rules to me?"

Alice chuckled once at my reaction. "It's not that complicated, Beau. There's only one core restriction—and if you think about it, you can probably figure it out for yourself."

I thought about it. "Nope, I have no idea."

She shook her head, disappointed. "Maybe it's too obvious. We just have to keep our existence a

Secret."

"Oh," I mumbled. It was obvious.

"It makes sense, and most of us don't need policing," she continued. "But, after a few centuries, sometimes one of us gets bored. Or crazy. I don't know. And then the Volturi step in before it can  compromise them, or the rest of us."

"So Edward…"

"Is planning to flout that in their own city—the city they've secretly held for three thousand years, since the time of the Etruscans. They are so protective of their city that they don't allow hunting within its walls. Volterra is probably the safest city in the world—from vampire attack at the very least. Which is why they’re not going to like me bringing a newborn into their city"

"But you said they didn't leave. How do they eat?"

"They don't leave. They bring in their food from the outside, from quite far away sometimes. It gives their guard something to do when they're not out annihilating mavericks. Or protecting Volterra from e xposure…"

"From situations like this one, like Edward," I finished her sentence. It was amazingly easy to say his  name now. I wasn't sure what the difference was. Maybe because I wasn't really planning on living much longer without seeing him. Or at all, if we were too late. It was comforting to know that I would have an easy out.

"I doubt they've ever had a situation quite like this," she muttered, disgusted. "You don't get a lot of  suicidal vampires."

The sound that escaped out of my mouth was very quiet, but Alice seemed to understand that it was a cry of pain. She wrapped her thin, strong arm around my shoulders.

"We'll do what we can, Beau. It's not over yet."

"Not yet." I let her comfort me, though I knew she thought our chances were poor. "And the Volturi will get us if we mess up."

Alice stiffened. "You say that like it's a good thing."

I shrugged.

"Knock it off, Beau, or we're turning around in New York and going back to Forks."

"What?"

"You know what. If we're too late for Edward, I'm going to do my damnedest to get you out alive, and I don't want any trouble from you. Do you understand that?"

"Sure, Alice."

She pulled back slightly so that she could glare at me. "No trouble."

"Scout's honor," I muttered.

She rolled her eyes.

"Let me concentrate, now. I'm trying to see what he's planning."

She left her arm around me, but let her head fall back against the seat and closed her eyes. She pressed her free hand to the side of her face, rubbing her fingertips against her temple.

I watched her in fascination for a long time. Eventually, she became utterly motionless, her face like a stone sculpture. The minutes passed, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought she'd fallen asleep.

I didn't dare interrupt her to ask what was going on.

I wished there was something safe for me to think about. I couldn't allow myself to consider the horrors we were headed toward, or, more horrific yet, the chance that we might fail—not if I wanted to keep from screaming aloud.

I couldn't anticipate anything, either. Maybe, if I were very, very, very lucky, I would somehow be able  to save Edward. But I wasn't so stupid as to think that saving him would mean that I could stay with him.

I was no different, no more special than I'd been before. I was a vampire, but that didn’t change much. There would be no new reason for him to want me now. Seeing him and losing him again…

I fought back against the pain. This was the price I had to pay to save his life. I would pay it.

They showed a movie, and my neighbor got headphones. Sometimes I watched the figures moving  across the little screen, but I couldn't even tell if the movie was supposed to be a romance or a horror film.

After an eternity, the plane began to descend toward New York City. Alice remained in her trance. I  dithered, reaching out to touch her, only to pull my hand back again. This happened a dozen times before the plane touched town with a jarring impact.

"Alice," I finally said. "Alice, we have to go."

I touched her arm.

Her eyes came open very slowly. She shook her head from side to side for a moment.

"Anything new?" I asked in a low voice, conscious of the man listening on the other side of me.

"Not exactly," she breathed in a voice I could barely catch. "He's getting closer. He's deciding how he's going to ask."

We had to run for our connection, but that was good—better than having to wait. As soon as the plane was in the air, Alice closed her eyes and slid back into the same stupor as before. I waited as patiently as I could. When it was dark again, I opened the window to stare out into the flat black that was no better than the window shade.

I was grateful that I'd had so many months' practice with controlling my thoughts. Instead of dwelling on the terrifying possibilities that, no matter what Alice said, I did not intend to survive, I concentrated on lesser problems. Like, what I was going to say to Jacob? He'd promised to wait for me, but did that promise still apply? Would I end up home alone in Forks, with no one at all? Maybe I didn't want to survive, no matter what happened.

It felt like seconds later when Alice got my attention.

"Beau," she hissed, her voice a little too loud in the darkened cabin full of sleeping humans.

"What's wrong?"

Alice's eyes gleamed in the dim light of a reading lamp in the row behind us.

"It's not wrong." She smiled fiercely. "It's right. They're deliberating, but they've decided to tell him no."

"The Volturi?" I muttered, voice hoarse with thirst.

"Of course, Beau, keep up. I can see what they're going to say."

"Tell me."

An attendant tiptoed down the aisle to us. "Can I get any of you a pillow?" His hushed whisper was a  rebuke to our comparatively loud conversation.

"No, thank you." Alice beamed up at him, her smile shockingly lovely. The attendant's expression was dazed as he turned and stumbled his way back.

"Tell me," I breathed almost silently.

She whispered into my ear. "They're interested in him—they think his talent could be useful. They're going to offer him a place with them."

"What will he say?"

"I can't see that yet, but I'll bet it's colorful." She grinned again. "This is the first good news—the first  break. They're intrigued; they truly don't want to destroy him—'wasteful,' that's the word Aro will  use—and that may be enough to force him to get creative. The longer he spends on his plans, the better for us."

It wasn't enough to make me hopeful, to make me feel the relief she obviously felt. There were still so many ways that we could be too late. And if I didn't get through the walls into the Volturi city, I wouldn't be able to stop Alice from dragging me back home.

"Alice?"

"What?"

"I'm confused. How are you seeing this so clearly? And then other times, you see things far away—things that don't happen?"

Her eyes tightened. I wondered if she guessed what I was thinking of.

"It's clear because it's immediate and close, and I'm really concentrating. The faraway things that come on their own—those are just glimpses, faint maybes. Plus, I see my kind more easily than humans. Edward is even easier because I'm so attuned to him."

"You saw me sometimes," I reminded her.

She shook her head. "Not as clearly, not when you were human."

I nodded, accepting her answer. Alice pulled her legs up on the seat, wrapping her arms around them and leaning her forehead against her knees. She rocked back and forth as she concentrated.

I rested my head against the seat, watching her, and the next thing I knew, she was snapping the shade closed against the faint brightening in the eastern sky.

"What's happening?" I whispered.

"They've told him no," she said quietly. I noticed at once that her enthusiasm was gone.

My voice choked in my throat with panic. "What's he going to do?"

"It was chaotic at first. I was only getting flickers, he was changing plans so quickly."

"What kinds of plans?" I pressed.

"There was a bad hour," she whispered. "He'd decided to go hunting."

She looked at me, seeing the comprehension in my face.

"In the city," she explained. "It got very close. He changed his mind at the last minute."

"He wouldn't want to disappoint Carlisle," I mumbled. Not at the end.

"Probably," she agreed.

"Will there be enough time?" As I spoke, there was a shift in the cabin pressure. I could feel the plane angling downward.

"I'm hoping so—if he sticks to his latest decision, maybe."

"What is that?"

"He's going to keep it simple. He's just going to walk out into the sun."

Just walk out into the sun. That was all.

It would be enough. The image of Edward in the meadow—glowing, shimmering like his skin was made of a million diamond facets—was burned into my memory. No human who saw that would ever forget.

The Volturi couldn't possibly allow it. Not if they wanted to keep their city inconspicuous.

I looked at the slight gray glow that shone through the opened windows. "We'll be too late," I whispered, my throat closing in panic. I couldn’t even breath to steady myself, not if I wanted to keep my control. Not with all these humans around me.

She shook her head. "Right now, he's leaning toward the melodramatic. He wants the biggest audience possible, so he'll choose the main plaza, under the clock tower. The walls are high there. He'll wait till the sun is exactly overhead."

"So we have till noon?"

"If we're lucky. If he sticks with this decision."

The pilot came on over the intercom, announcing, first in French and then in English, our imminent  landing. The seat belt lights dinged and flashed.

"How far is it from Florence to Volterra?"

"That depends on how fast you drive… Beau?"

"Yes?"

She eyed me speculatively. "How strongly are you opposed to grand theft auto?"

A bright yellow Porsche screamed to a stop a few feet in front of where I stood, head ducked as I tried to hide in the hoodie I was wearing. The word TURBO scrawled in silver cursive across its back. Everyone beside me on the crowded airport sidewalk stared.

"Hurry, Beau!" Alice shouted impatiently through the open passenger window.

I swiftly ran to the door and ducked my head as I let myself in, feeling as though I might as well be wearing a black stocking over my head.

"Sheesh, Alice," I complained. "Could you pick a more conspicuous car to steal?"

The interior was black leather, and the windows were tinted dark. It felt safer inside, like nighttime. The last few days, the first days of my immortal life, most were spent outside at night. It comforted me.

Alice was already weaving, fast, through the thick airport traffic—sliding through tiny spaces between the cars as I settled in my seat, forgoing the seatbelt.

"The important question," she corrected, "is whether I could have stolen a faster car, and I don't think so. I got lucky."

"I'm sure that will be very comforting at the roadblock."

She trilled a laugh. "Trust me, Beau. If anyone sets up a roadblock, it will be behind us." She hit the gas then, as if to prove her point.

I probably should have watched out the window as first the city of Florence and then the Tuscan  landscape flashed past with blurring speed. This was my first trip anywhere, and maybe my last, too. 

But the danger Edward was in frightened me, despite being so close, I couldn’t help but feel that we were already too late. I was too tortured with anxiety to really see the hills or the walled towns that looked like castles in the distance.

"Do you see anything more?"

"There's something going on," Alice muttered. "Some kind of festival. The streets are full of people and red flags. What's the date today?"

I wasn't entirely sure. "The nineteenth, maybe?"

"Well, that's ironic. It's Saint Marcus Day."

"Which means?"

She chuckled darkly. "The city holds a celebration every year. As the legend goes, a Christian  missionary, a Father Marcus—Marcus of the Voltun, in fact—drove all the vampires from Volterra  fifteen hundred years ago. The story claims he was martyred in Romania, still trying to drive away the vampire scourge. Of course that's nonsense—he's never left the city. But that's where some of the superstitions about things like crosses and garlic come from. Father Marcus used them so successfully. And vampires don't trouble Volterra, so they must work." Her smile was sardonic.

"It's become more of a celebration of the city, and recognition for the police force—after all, Volterra is an amazingly safe city. The police get the credit."

I was realizing what she meant when she'd said ironic. "They're not going to be very happy if Edward  messes things up for them on St. Marcus Day, are they?"

She shook her head, her expression grim. "No. They'll act very quickly."

I looked away, my new teeth worried my bottom lip, the texture smooth in my mouth. I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking skin now. Or ever.

The sun was terrifyingly high in the pale blue sky.

"He's still planning on noon?" I checked.

"Yes. He's decided to wait. And they're waiting for him."

"Tell me what I have to do."

She kept her eyes on the winding road—the needle on the speedometer was touching the far right on the dial.

"You don't have to do anything. He just has to see you before he moves into the light. And he has to see you before he sees me."

"How are we going to work that?"

A small red car seemed to be racing backward as Alice zoomed around it.

"I'm going to get you as close as possible, and then you're going to run in the direction I point you."

I nodded.

"Try not to draw attention to yourself. Move fast, but not vampire fast," she added. “Keep your hood up and your head down.”

I groaned.

The sun continued to climb in the sky while Alice raced against it. It was too bright:, and that had me  panicking. Maybe he wouldn't feel the need to wait for noon after all.

"There," Alice said abruptly, pointing to the castle city atop the closest hill.

I stared at it, feeling the very first hint of a new kind of fear. Every minute since yesterday morning—it seemed like a week ago—when Alice had spoken his name at the foot of the stairs, there had been only one fear. And yet, now, as I stared at the ancient sienna walls and towers crowning the peak of the steep hill, I felt another, more selfish kind of dread thrill through me.


	7. Chapter 7

We began the steep climb, and the road grew congested. As we wound higher, the cars became too close together for Alice to weave insanely between them anymore. We slowed to a  crawl behind a little tan Peugeot.

"Alice," I moaned. The clock on the dash seemed to be speeding up.

"It's the only way in," she tried soothe me. But her voice was too strained to comfort.

The cars continued to edge forward, one car length at a time. The sun beamed down brilliantly, seeming already overhead. What little sun that got through my window made my skin glow subtly. 

The cars crept one by one toward the city. As we got closer, I could see cars parked by the side of the road with people getting out to walk the test of the way. At first I thought it was just impatience—something I could easily understand. But then we came around a switchback, and I could see the filled parking lot outside the city wall, the crowds of people walking through the gates. 

No one was being allowed to drive through.

"Alice," I whispered urgently.

"I know," she said. Her face was chiseled from ice.

Now that I was looking, I could tell that it was very windy.

The people crowding toward the gate gripped their hats and tugged their hair out of their faces. Their  clothes billowed around them. I also noticed that the color red was everywhere. Red shirts, red hats, red flags dripping like long ribbons beside the gate, whipping in the wind—as I watched, the brilliant crimson scarf one woman had tied around her hair was caught in a sudden gust. It twisted up into the air above her, writhing like it was alive. She reached for it, jumping in the air, but it continued to flutter higher, a patch of bloody color against the dull, ancient walls.

"Beau." Alice spoke quickly in a fierce, low voice. "I can't see what the guard here will decide now—if  this doesn't work, you're going to have to go in alone. You're going to have to run. Just keep asking for the Palazzo dei Priori, and running in the direction they tell you. Don't get lost. Don’t let them see your eyes. Don’t worry, you won’t lose control."

"Palazzo dei Priori, Palazzo dei Priori," I repeated the name over and over again, trying to get it down. Trying to ignore the scent of blood I could smell through the windows.

"Or 'the clock tower,' if they speak English. I'll go around and try to find a secluded spot somewhere  behind the city where I can go over the wall."

I nodded. "Palazzo dei Priori."

"Edward will be under the clock tower, to the north of the square. There's a narrow alleyway on the  right, and he'll be in the shadow there. You have to get his attention before he can move into the sun."

I nodded furiously.

Alice was near the front of the line. A man in a navy blue uniform was directing the flow of traffic, turning the cars away from the full lot. They U-turned and headed back to find a place beside the road. Then it was Alice's turn. I turned away slightly, to not be noticed immediately. 

The uniformed man motioned lazily, not paying attention. Alice accelerated, edging around him and  heading for the gate. He shouted something at us, but held his ground, waving frantically to keep the next car from following our bad example.

The man at the gate wore a matching uniform. As we approached him, the throngs of tourists passed, crowding the sidewalks, staring curiously at the pushy, flashy Porsche.

The guard stepped into the middle of the street. Alice angled the car carefully before she came to a full stop. The sun beat against my window, and she was in shadow. She swiftly reached behind the seat and grabbed something from her bag.

The guard came around the car with an irritated expression, and tapped on her window angrily.

She rolled the window down halfway, and I watched him do a double take when he saw the face behind the dark glass. I held my breath but my hand involuntarily tightened on the seat as the scent of blood washed over me. I could barely pay attention to what Alice was saying. 

"I'm sorry, only tour buses allowed in the city today, miss," he said in English, with a heavy accent. 

He was apologetic, now, as if he wished he had better news for the strikingly beautiful woman.

"It's a private tour," Alice said, flashing an alluring smile. She reached her hand out of the window, into the sunlight. I froze, until I realized she was wearing an elbow-length, tan glove. She took his hand, still raised from tapping her window, and pulled it into the car. She put something into his palm, and folded his fingers around it.

His face was dazed as he retrieved his hand and stared at the thick roll of money he now held. The outside bill was a thousand dollar bill.

"Is this a joke?" he mumbled.

Alice's smile was blinding. "Only if you think it's funny."

He looked at her, his eyes staring wide. I glanced nervously at the clock on the dash. If Edward stuck to his plan, we had only five minutes left.

"I'm in a wee bit of a hurry," she hinted, still smiling.

The guard blinked twice, and then shoved the money inside his vest. He took a step away from the window and waved us on. None of the passing people seemed to notice the quiet exchange. Alice drove into the city, and we both sighed in relief.

The street was very narrow, cobbled with the same color stones as the faded cinnamon brown buildings that darkened the street with their shade. It had the feel of an alleyway. Red flags decorated the walls, spaced only a few yards apart, flapping in the wind that whistled through the narrow lane.

It was crowded, and the foot traffic slowed our progress.

"Just a little farther," Alice encouraged me; I was gripping the door handle, ready to throw myself into the street as soon as she spoke the word. My other hand was buried in the seat, my new strength allowing me to tear into it easily. Alice didn’t comment.

She drove in quick spurts and sudden stops, and the people in the crowd shook their fists at us and said angry words that I was glad I couldn't understand. She turned onto a little path that couldn't have been meant for cars; shocked people had to squeeze into doorways as we scraped by. We found another street at the end. 

The buildings were taller here; they leaned together overhead so that no sunlight touched the pavement—the thrashing red flags on either side nearly met. The crowd was thicker here  than anywhere else. Alice stopped the car. I had the door open before we were at a standstill.

She pointed to where the street widened into a patch of bright openness. 

"There—we're at the southern end of the square. Run straight across, to the right of the clock tower. I'll find a way around—"

Her breath caught suddenly, and when she spoke again, her voice was a hiss. "They're everywhere?" I immediately understood what she meant. I could smell the sweetness of other vampires, all around us. 

I froze in place, but she pushed me out of the car. "Forget about them. You have two minutes. Go, Beau, go!" she shouted, climbing out of the car as she spoke.

I didn't pause to watch Alice melt into the shadows. I didn't stop to close my door behind me. I shoved a heavy woman out of my way as gently as I could and ran flat out, trying to keep a human pace, head down, paying little attention to anything but the uneven stones beneath my feet.

It took all of my control not to take off after every human that walked by me, the wind slamming their scent into me, making my throat blaze furiously.

Coming out of the dark lane, I was blinded by the brilliant sunlight beating down into the principal plaza. I immediately pulled my hood closer and shoved my hands into my pockets, keeping my face angled down. Edward wasn’t the only one in danger of being discovered.

The wind whooshed into me, flinging my hair into my eyes. It was no wonder that I didn't see the wall of flesh until I'd smacked into it. I froze for a moment, getting my instincts under control, before evaluating my situation.

There was no pathway, no crevice between the close pressed bodies. I pushed against them gently, fighting the hands that shoved back. I heard exclamations of irritation and even pain as I battled my way through, but none were in a language I understood. The faces were a blur of anger and surprise, surrounded by the ever-present red. A blond woman scowled at me, and the red scarf coiled around her neck looked like a gruesome wound. A child, lifted on a man's shoulders to see over the crowd, grinned down at me, his lips distended over a set of plastic vampire fangs.

The throng jostled around me, but I was unmoving in the midst of them. I was glad the clock was so visible, or I'd never keep my course straight. But both hands on the clock pointed up toward the pitiless sun, and, though I shoved harder against the crowd, I knew I was too late. I wasn't halfway across. I wasn't going to make it. I was stupid and slow and if only I could use my natural speed, but I couldn't , and we were all going to die because of it.

I hoped Alice would get out. I hoped that she would see me from some dark shadow and know that I  had failed, so she could go home to Jasper.

I listened, above the angry exclamations, trying to hear the sound of discovery: the gasp, maybe the  scream, as Edward came into someone's view.

But there was a break in the crowd—I could see a bubble of space ahead. I pushed urgently toward it, not realizing till I hit my shins against the bricks that there was a wide, square fountain set into the  center of the plaza. I ignored the small sound of crumbling rock.

I flung my leg over the edge and ran through the knee-deep water. It sprayed all around me as I made my way across the pool. I could feel the cold but it was uncomfortable. It wasn’t painful. My stride broke through the water as easily as if I were walking on land. But the fountain was very wide; it let me cross the center of the square and then some in mere seconds. I didn't pause when I hit the far edge—I used the low wall as a springboard, throwing myself into the crowd.

They moved more readily for me now, avoiding the icy water that splattered from my dripping clothes as I ran. I glanced up at the clock again.

A deep, booming chime echoed through the square. It throbbed in the stones under my feet. Children cried, covering their ears. And I started shouting as I ran.

"Edward!" I yelled, knowing it was useless. The crowd was too loud, and my voice was hoarse  with thirst. But I couldn't stop screaming.

The clock tolled again. I ran past a child in his mother's arms—his hair was almost white in the dazzling sunlight. A circle of tall men, all wearing red blazers, called out warnings as I barreled through them. The clock tolled again.

On the other side of the men in blazers, there was a break in the throng, space between the sightseers who milled aimlessly around me. My eyes searched the dark narrow passage to the right of the wide square edifice under the tower. I couldn't see the street level—there were still too many people in the way. The clock tolled again.

It was hard to see now. Without the crowd to break the wind, it whipped at my face. A little family of four stood nearest to the alley's mouth. The two girls wore crimson dresses, with matching ribbons tying their dark hair back. The father wasn't tall. It seemed like I could see something bright in the shadows, just over his shoulder. I hurtled toward them, trying to see past the stinging venom in my eyes.

The clock tolled, and the littlest girl clamped her hands over her ears.

The older girl, just waist high on her mother, hugged her mother's leg and stared into the shadows behind them. As I watched, she tugged on her mother's elbow and pointed toward the darkness. The clock tolled, and I was so close now.

I was close enough to hear her high-pitched voice. Her father stared at me in surprise as I bore down on them, rasping out Edward's name over and over again.

The older girl giggled and said something to her mother, gesturing toward the shadows again impatiently.

I swerved around the father—he clutched the baby out of my way—and sprinted for the gloomy breach behind them as the clock tolled over my head.

"Edward, no!" I shouted, but my voice was lost in the roar of the chime.

I could see him now. And I could see that he could not see me.

It was really him, no hallucination this time. And I realized that my delusions were more flawed than I'd realized; they'd never done him justice.

Edward stood, motionless as a statue, just a few feet from the mouth of the alley. His eyes were closed, the rings underneath them deep purple, his arms relaxed at his sides, his palms turned forward. His expression was very peaceful, like he was dreaming pleasant things. The marble skin of his chest was bare—there was a small pile of white fabric at his feet. The light reflecting from the pavement of the square gleamed dimly from his skin.

I'd never seen anything more beautiful—even as I ran, shouting and nearly mad with thirst, I could appreciate that.

And the last seven months meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not  matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived.

The clock tolled, and he took a large stride toward the light.

"No!" I shouted. "Edward, look at me!"

He wasn't listening. He smiled very slightly. He raised his foot to take the step that would put him directly in the path of the sun.

I slammed into him so hard that the force knocked both of us to the ground, back into the shadows. It would have knocked my breath out of me if I were human. His arms reached up to circle around my waist, to steady me.

His dark eyes opened slowly as the clock tolled again.

He looked up at me with quiet surprise. I could see the moment he understood, as he gazed into my crimson eyes. His face morphed into one of horror, then acceptance. And finally, joy. 

It was very strange, for I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect—not healed, but as if there had been no wound in the first place.

“We have to get out of here before the Volturi—"

Comprehension flickered on his face as I spoke. Before I could finish, he suddenly yanked me away  from the edge of the shadows, spinning me effortlessly so that my back was tight against the brick wall, and his back was to me as he faced away into the alley. His arms spread wide, protectively, in front of me. I almost told him that I could take care of myself.

I peeked under his arm to see two dark shapes detach themselves from the gloom.

"Greetings, gentlemen," Edward's voice was calm and pleasant, on the surface. "I don't think I'll be  requiring your services today. I would appreciate it very much, however, if you would send my thanks to your masters."

"Shall we take this conversation to a more appropriate venue?" a smooth voice whispered menacingly.

"I don't believe that will be necessary." Edward's voice was harder now. "I know your instructions, Felix. I haven't broken any rules."

"Felix merely meant to point out the proximity of the sun," the other shadow said in a soothing tone. They were both concealed within smoky gray cloaks that reached to the ground and undulated in the wind.

"Let us seek better cover."

"I'll be right behind you," Edward said dryly. "Beau, why don't you go back to the square and enjoy the festival?"

"No, bring the newborn," the first shadow said, somehow injecting a leer into his whisper.

"I don't think so." The pretense of civility disappeared. Edward's voice was flat and icy. His weight  shifted infinitesimally, and I could see that he was preparing to fight.

"No." I mouthed the word.

"Shh," he murmured, only for me.

"Felix," the second, more reasonable shadow cautioned. "Not here." He turned to Edward. "Aro would simply like to speak with you again, if you have decided not to force our hand after all."

"Certainly," Edward agreed. '"But the newborn goes free."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," the polite shadow said regretfully. "We do have rules to obey."

"Then I'm afraid that I'll be unable to accept Aro's invitation, Demetri."

"That's just fine," Felix purred. I finally tore my eyes away from Edward to look at them. I could see that Felix was very big, tall and thick through the shoulders. His size reminded me of Emmett.

"Aro will be disappointed," Demetri sighed.

"I'm sure he'll survive the letdown," Edward replied.

Felix and Demetri stole closer toward the mouth of the alley, spreading out slightly so they could come at Edward from two sides. They meant to force him deeper into the alley, to avoid a scene. No reflected light found access to their skin; they were safe inside their cloaks.

Edward didn't move an inch. He was dooming himself by protecting me. And I didn’t need protecting. I pushed Edward to the side gently, standing next to him, rather than beside him. He went to protest but stopped.

Abruptly, Edward's head whipped around, toward the darkness of the winding alley, and Demetri and  Felix did the same, in response to the sound of someone, another vampire, approaching. I took in a breath that scorched my throat but it let me know that Alice was coming. I let out a breath of relief.

"Let's behave ourselves, shall we?" Her lilting voice suggested. "There are ladies present."

Alice tripped lightly to Edward's side, her stance casual. There was no hint of any underlying tension. She looked so tiny, so fragile. Her little arms swung like a child's.

Yet Demetri and Felix both straightened up, their cloaks swirling slightly as a gust of wind funneled  through the alley. Felix's face soured. Apparently, they didn't like be outnumbered.

"We're not alone," she reminded them.

Demetri glanced over his shoulder. A few yards into the square, the little family, with the girls in their red dresses, was watching us. The mother was speaking urgently to her husband, her eyes on the five of us.

She looked away when Demetri met her gaze. The man walked a few steps farther into the plaza, and tapped one of the red-blazered men on the shoulder.

Demetri shook his head. "Please, Edward, let's be reasonable," he said.

"Let's," Edward agreed. "And we'll leave quietly now, with no one the wiser."

Demetri sighed in frustration. "At least let us discuss this more privately."

Six men in red now joined the family as they watched us with anxious expressions. I was very conscious of Edward's protective stance in front of me—sure that this was what caused their alarm. I wanted to scream to them to run. Instead, I shifted again, moving out from behind Edward. He shot me a look, which I returned.

Edward's teeth came together audibly. "No."

Felix smiled.

"Enough."

The voice was high, reedy, and it came from behind us.

I peeked under Edward's other arm to see a small, dark shape coming toward us. By the way the edges billowed, I knew it would be another one of them. Who else? The scent was unfamiliar.

At first I thought it was a young boy. The newcomer was as tiny as Alice, with lank, pale brown hair  trimmed short. The body under the cloak—which was darker, almost black—was slim and androgynous.

But the face was too pretty for a boy. The wide-eyed, full-lipped face would make a Botticelli angel look like a gargoyle. Even allowing for the dull crimson irises.

Her size was so insignificant that the reaction to her appearance confused me. Felix and Demetri relaxed immediately, stepping back from their offensive positions to blend again with the shadows of the overhanging walls. 

Edward dropped his arms and relaxed his position as well—but in defeat.

"Jane," he sighed in recognition and resignation.

Alice folded her arms across her chest, her expression impassive.

"Follow me," Jane spoke again, her childish voice a monotone. She turned her back on us and drifted silently into the dark.

Felix gestured for us to go first, smirking.

Alice walked after the little Jane at once. Edward wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me along beside her. The alley angled slightly downward as it narrowed. I looked up at him with frantic questions in my eyes, but he just shook his head. I could hear the others following behind us.

"Well, Alice," Edward said conversationally as we walked. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see you here."

"It was my mistake," Alice answered in the same tone. "It was my job to set it right."

"What happened?" His voice was polite, as if he were barely interested. I imagined this was due to the listening ears behind us.

"It's a long story." Alice's eyes flickered toward me and away. "In summary, Beau was hiking. Laurent was in the area. But, the Quileute’s intervened.”

I tensed and turned my eyes straight ahead, looking after the dark shadow that I could still see. I  could imagine what he was hearing in Alice's thoughts now. Near-drownings, stalking vampires,  werewolf friends…

"Hm," Edward said curtly, and the casual tone of his voice was gone.

There was a loose curve to the alley, still slanting downward, so I didn't see the squared-off dead end coming until we reached the flat, windowless, brick face. The little one called Jane was nowhere to be seen.

Alice didn't hesitate, didn't break pace as she strode toward the wall. Then, with easy grace, she slid  down an open hole in the street.

It looked like a drain, sunk into the lowest point of the paving. I hadn't noticed it until Alice disappeared, but the grate was halfway pushed aside. The hole was small, and black.

I balked.

"It's all right, Beau," Edward said in a low voice. I remembered that I was no longer human. I eyed the hole doubtfully. I imagine he would have gone first, if Demetri and Felix hadn't been waiting,  smug and silent, behind us.

“Right.” I said, clearing my throat subtly. 

I crouched down, swinging my legs into the narrow gap.

"Alice?" I whispered, voice quiet.

"I'm right here, Beau, I’m waiting for you." she reassured me. Her voice came from too far below to make me feel better.

Edward took my wrists—his hands felt like stones in winter—and lowered me into the blackness.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Drop him," Alice called.

I closed my eyes so I couldn't see the darkness, scrunching them together in terror, clamping my mouth shut so I wouldn't shout. Edward let me fall.

It was silent and short. The air whipped past me for just half a second, and then, with a huff as I exhaled, my feet hit the ground. I had bent my knees and I landed somewhat gracefully.

It was dim, but not black at the bottom. The light from the hole above provided a faint glow, reflecting wetly from the stones under my feet. The light vanished for a second, and then Edward was a faint, white radiance beside me. He put his arm around me, holding me close to his side, and began to tow me swiftly forward. I didn’t resist. I wrapped both arms around his cold waist, and walked smoothly across uneven stone surface. The sound of the heavy grate sliding over the drain hole behind us rang with metallic finality.

The dim light from the street was quickly lost in the gloom. Yet I could still see perfectly. There were no sounds other than our soft footsteps on the wet stones—except for once, when an impatient sigh whispered from behind me. They sped up, finally reaching a comfortable vampire pace.

Edward held me tightly. He reached his free hand across his body to hold my face, too, his smooth  thumb tracing across my lips. Now and then, I felt his face press into my hair. I realized that this was the only reunion we would get, and I clutched myself closer to him.

For now, it felt like he wanted me, and that was enough to offset the horror of the subterranean tunnel and the prowling vampires behind us. It was probably no more than guilt—the same guilt that compelled him to come here to die when he'd believed that it was his fault that I'd died. But I felt his lips press silently against my forehead, and I didn't care what the motivation was. At least I could be with him again before I died. That was better than a long life.

I wished I could ask him exactly what was going to happen now. I desperately wanted to know how we were going to die—as if that would somehow make it better, knowing in advance. But I couldn't speak, even in a whisper, surrounded as we were. The others could hear everything—my every breath, which I realized and stopped. The path beneath our feet continued to slant downward, taking us deeper into the ground, and it made me claustrophobic. Only Edward's hand, soothing against my face, kept me from screaming out loud.

I couldn't tell where the light was coming from, but it slowly turned dark gray instead of black. We were in a low, arched tunnel. Long trails of ebony moisture seeped down the gray stones, like they were bleeding ink.

We hurried through the tunnel, or it felt like hurrying to me. At the end of the tunnel was a grate—the iron bars were rusting, but thick as my arm. A small door made of thinner, interlaced bars was standing open. Edward ducked through and hurried on to a larger, brighter stone room. The grille slammed shut with a clang, followed by the snap of a lock. I was too afraid to look behind me.

On the other side of the long room was a low, heavy wooden door. It was very thick—as I could tell.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

We were in a brightly lit, unremarkable hallway. The walls were off-white, the floor carpeted in industrial gray. Common rectangular fluorescent lights were spaced evenly along the ceiling. It was warmer here, for which I was grateful. This hall seemed very benign after the gloom of the ghoulish stone sewers.

Edward didn't seem to agree with my assessment. He glowered darkly down the long hallway, toward the slight, black shrouded figure at the end, standing by an elevator.

He pulled me along, and Alice walked on my other side. The heavy door creaked shut behind us, and then there was the thud of a bolt sliding home.

Jane waited by the elevator, one hand holding the doors open for us. Her expression was apathetic.

Once inside the elevator, the three vampires that belonged to the Volturi relaxed further. They threw  back their cloaks, letting the hoods fall back on their shoulders. Felix and Demetri were both of a slightly olive complexion—it looked odd combined with their chalky pallor. Felix's black hair was cropped short, but Demetri's waved to his shoulders. Their irises were deep crimson around the edges, darkening until they were black around the pupil. Under the shrouds, their clothes were modern, pale, and nondescript. Edward’s hand still rubbed against my arm. He never took his  eyes off Jane.

The elevator ride was short; we stepped out into what looked like a posh office reception area. The walls were paneled in wood, the floors carpeted in thick, deep green. There were no windows, but large, brightly lit paintings of the Tuscan countryside hung everywhere as replacements. Pale leather couches were arranged in cozy groupings, and the glossy tables held crystal vases full of vibrantly colored bouquets. The flowers' smell reminded me of a funeral home.

In the middle of the room was a high, polished mahogany counter. I gawked in astonishment at the  woman behind it. I immediately cut my breathing and my hand tightened around Edward’s. She was tall, with dark skin and green eyes. She would have been very pretty in any other company—but not here. Because she was human. I couldn't comprehend what this human woman was doing here, totally at ease, surrounded by vampires. 

She smiled politely in welcome. "Good afternoon, Jane," she said. There was no surprise in her face as she glanced at Jane's company. Not Edward, his bare chest glinting dimly in the white lights, or even me, disheveled and obviously a newborn.

Jane nodded. "Gianna." She continued toward a set of double doors in the back of the room, and we followed.

As Felix passed the desk, he winked at Gianna, and she giggled.

On the other side of the wooden doors was a different kind of reception. The pale boy in the pearl gray suit could have been Jane's twin. His hair was darker, and his lips were not as full, but he was just as lovely. He came forward to meet us. He smiled, reaching for her. "Jane."

"Alec," she responded, embracing the boy. They kissed each other's cheeks on both sides. Then he  looked at us.

"They send you out for one and you come back with three...," he noted, looking at me. "Nice w ork."

She laughed—the sound sparkled with delight like a baby's cooing.

"Welcome back, Edward," Alec greeted him. "You seem in a better mood."

"Marginally," Edward agreed in a flat voice. I glanced at Edward's hard face, and wondered how his  mood could have been darker before.

Alec chuckled, and examined me as I clung to Edward's side. "And this is the cause of all the trouble?” he asked, skeptical.

Edward only smiled, his expression contemptuous. Then he froze.

"Dibs," Felix called casually from behind.

Edward turned, a low snarl building deep in his chest. But my own ripped out my throat threateningly. Felix smiled—his hand was raised, palm up; he curled his fingers twice, inviting Edward forward.

Alice touched Edward's arm. "Patience," she cautioned him. She shot me a look that clearly meant to chill out, and I sneered at Felix, red eyes glowering. Edward tried to hide a smile.

They exchanged a long glance, and I wished I could hear what she was telling him. I figured that it was something to do with not attacking Felix, because Edward took a deep breath and turned back to Alec.

"Aro will be so pleased to see you again," Alec said, as if nothing had passed.

"Let's not keep him waiting," Jane suggested.

Edward nodded once.

Alec and Jane, holding hands, led the way down yet another wide, ornate hall—would there ever be an end?

They ignored the doors at the end of the hall—doors entirely sheathed in gold—stopping halfway down the hall and sliding aside a piece of the paneling to expose a plain wooden door. It wasn't locked. Alec held it open for Jane.

I wanted to groan when Edward pulled me through to the other side of the door. It was the same ancient stone as the square, the alley, and the sewers. And it was dark again.

The stone antechamber was not large. It opened quickly into a brighter, cavernous room, perfectly round like a huge castle turret… which was probably exactly what it was.

Two stories up, long window slits threw thin rectangles of bright sunlight onto the stone floor below.

There were no artificial lights. The only furniture in the room were several massive wooden chairs, like thrones, that were spaced unevenly, flush with the curving stone walls. In the very center of the circle, in a slight depression, was another drain. I wondered if they used it as an exit, like the hole in the street.

The room was not empty. A handful of people were convened in seemingly relaxed conversation. The murmur of low, smooth voices was a gentle hum in the air. As I watched, a pair of pale women in summer dresses paused in a patch of light, and, like prisms, their skin threw the light in rainbow sparkles against the sienna walls.

The exquisite faces all turned toward our party as we entered the room. Most of the immortals were  dressed in inconspicuous pants and shirts—things that wouldn't stick out at all on the streets below. But the man who spoke first wore one of the long robes. It was pitch-black, and brushed against the floor.

His long, jet-black hair was blending into the hood of his cloak. But with my newer vampire vision, it was easy to distinguish.

"Jane, dear one, you've returned!" he cried in evident delight. His voice was just a soft sighing.

He drifted forward, and the movement flowed with such surreal grace that I gawked. Even Alice, whose every motion looked like dancing, could not compare.

I focused on his face. It was not like the unnaturally attractive faces that surrounded him (for he did not approach us alone; the entire group converged around him, some following, and some walking ahead of him with the alert manner of bodyguards). I couldn't decide if his face was beautiful or not. I suppose the features were perfect. 

But he was as different from the vampires beside him as they were from me. His skin was translucently white, like onion skin, and it looked just as delicate—it stood in shocking contrast to the long black hair that framed his face. I felt a strange, horrifying urge to touch his cheek, to see if it was softer than Edward's or Alice's, or if it was powdery, like chalk. His eyes were red, the same as the others around him, but the color was clouded, milky; I wondered if his vision was affected by the haze.

He glided to Jane, took her face in his papery hands, kissed her lightly on her full lips, and then floated back a step.

"Yes, Master." Jane smiled; the expression made her look like an angelic child. "I brought him back alive, just as you wished."

"Ah, Jane." He smiled, too. "You are such a comfort to me."

He turned his misty eyes toward us, and the smile brightened—became ecstatic.

"And Alice and Beau, too!" he rejoiced, clapping his thin hands together. "This is a happy surprise! W onderful!"

I stared in shock as he called our names informally, as if we were old friends dropping in for an  unexpected visit.

He turned to our hulking escort. "Felix, be a dear and tell my brothers about our company. I'm sure they wouldn't want to miss this."

"Yes, Master." Felix nodded and disappeared back the way we had come.

"You see, Edward?" The strange vampire turned and smiled at Edward like a fond but scolding  grandfather. "What did I tell you? Aren't you glad that I didn't give you what you wanted yesterday?"

"Yes, Aro, I am," he agreed, tightening his arm around my waist.

"I love a happy ending." Aro sighed. "They are so rare. But I want the whole story. How did this  happen? Alice?" He turned to gaze at Alice with curious, misty eyes. 

"Your brother seemed to think you infallible, but apparently there was some mistake."

"Oh, I'm far from infallible." She flashed a dazzling smile. She looked perfectly at ease, except that her hands were balled into tight little fists. "As you can see today, I cause problems as often as I cure them."

"You're too modest," Aro chided. "I've seen some of your more amazing exploits, and I must admit I've never observed anything like your talent. Wonderful!"

Alice flickered a glance at Edward. Aro did not miss it.

"I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced properly at all, have we? It's just that I feel like I know you  already, and I tend to get ahead of myself. Your brother introduced us yesterday, in a peculiar way. You see, I share some of your brother's talent, only I am limited in a way that he is not." Aro shook his head; his tone was envious.

"And also exponentially more powerful," Edward added dryly. He looked at Alice as he swiftly  explained. "Aro needs physical contact to hear your thoughts, but he hears much more than I do. You know I can only hear what's passing through your head in the moment. Aro hears every thought your mind has ever had."

Alice raised her delicate eyebrows, and Edward inclined his head.

Aro didn't miss that either.

"But to be able to hear from a distance…" Aro sighed, gesturing toward the two of them, and the

exchange that had just taken place. "That would be so convenient."

Aro looked over our shoulders. All the other heads turned in the same direction, including Jane, Alec, and Demetri, who stood silently beside us.

Felix was back, and behind him floated two more black-robed men. Both looked very much like Aro, one even had the same flowing black hair. The other had a shock of snow-white hair—the same shade as his face—that brushed against his shoulders. Their faces had identical, paper-thin skin.

The trio from Carlisle's painting was complete, unchanged by the last three hundred years since it was painted.

"Marcus, Caius, look!" Aro crooned. "Beau is alive after all, though changed, and Alice is here with him! Isn't that wonderful?"

Neither of the other two looked as if wonderful would be their first choice of words. The dark-haired  man seemed utterly bored, like he'd seen too many millennia of Aro's enthusiasm. The other's face was sour under the snowy hair.

Their lack of interest did not curb Aro's enjoyment.

"Let us have the story," Aro almost sang in his feathery voice.

The white-haired ancient vampire drifted away, gliding toward one of the wooden thrones. The other  paused beside Aro, and he reached his hand out, at first I thought to take Aro's hand. But he just  touched Aro's palm briefly and then dropped his hand to his side. Aro raised one black brow. I wondered how his papery skin did not crumple in the effort.

Edward snorted very quietly, and Alice looked at him, curious.

"Thank you, Marcus," Aro said. "That's quite interesting."

I realized, a second late, that Marcus was letting Aro know his thoughts.

Marcus didn't look interested. He glided away from Aro to join the one who must be Caius, seated  against the wall. Two of the attending vampires followed silently behind him—bodyguards, like I'd  thought before. I could see that the two women in the sundresses had gone to stand beside Caius in the same manner. The idea of any vampire needing a guard was faintly ridiculous to me, but maybe the ancient ones were as frail as their skin suggested.

Aro was shaking his head. "Amazing," He said. "Absolutely amazing."

Alice's expression was frustrated. Edward turned to her and explained again in a swift, low voice.

"Marcus sees relationships. He's surprised by the intensity of ours."

Aro smiled. "So convenient," he repeated to himself. Then he spoke to us. "It takes quite a bit to surprise Marcus, I can assure you."

I looked at Marcus's dead face, and I believed that.

"It's just so difficult to understand, even now," Aro mused, staring at Edward's arm wrapped around me.

It was hard for me to follow Aro's chaotic train of thought. I struggled to keep up. "How were you able to stand so close to him like that when he was human?"

"It's not without effort," Edward answered calmly.

"But still—la tua cantante! What a waste!"

Edward chuckled once without humor. "I look at it more as a price."

Aro was skeptical. "A very high price."

"Opportunity cost."

Aro laughed. "If I hadn't smelled him through your memories, I wouldn't have believed the call of anyone's blood could be so strong. I've never felt anything like it myself. Most of us would trade much for such a gift, and yet you…"

"Wasted it," Edward finished, his voice sarcastic now.

Aro laughed again. "Ah, how I miss my friend Carlisle! You remind me of him—only he was not so a ngry."

"Carlisle outshines me in many other ways as well."

"I certainly never thought to see Carlisle bested for self-control of all things, but you put him to shame."

"Hardly." Edward sounded impatient. As if he were tired of the preliminaries. It made me more afraid; I couldn't help but try to imagine what he expected would follow.

"I am gratified by his success," Aro mused. "Your memories of him are quite a gift for me, though they astonish me exceedingly. I am surprised by how it… pleases me, his success in this unorthodox path he's chosen. I expected that he would waste, weaken with time. I'd scoffed at his plan to find others who would share his peculiar vision. Yet, somehow, I'm happy to be wrong."

Edward didn't reply.

"But your restraint!" Aro sighed. "I did not know such strength was possible. To inure yourself against  such a siren call, not just once but again and again—if I had not felt it myself, I would not have believed."

Edward gazed back at Aro's admiration with no expression. I knew his face well enough—time had not changed that—to guess at something seething beneath the surface. I fought to keep my face smooth and free of emotion.

"Just remembering how he appeals to you…" Aro chuckled. "It makes me thirsty."

Edward tensed. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t human anymore. 

"Don't be disturbed," Aro reassured him. "I mean him no harm. He no longer holds that appeal, being one of us. But I am so curious about one thing in particular." He eyed me with bright interest. "May I?" he asked eagerly, lifting one hand.

"Ask him," Edward suggested in a flat voice.

"Of course, how rude of me!" Aro exclaimed. "Beau," he addressed me directly now. "I'm fascinated that you are the one exception to Edward's impressive talent—so very interesting that such a thing should occur! And I was wondering, since our talents are similar in many ways, if you would be so kind as to allow me to try—to see if you are an exception for me, as well?"

My eyes flashed up to Edward's face. Despite Aro's overt politeness, I didn't believe I really had  a choice. I was horrified at the thought of allowing him to touch me, and yet also perversely intrigued by the chance to feel his strange skin.

Edward nodded in encouragement—whether because he was sure Aro would not hurt me, or because there was no choice, I couldn't tell.

I turned back to Aro and raised my hand slowly in front of me. It was stone still.

He glided closer, and I believe he meant his expression to be reassuring. But his papery features were too strange, too alien and frightening, to reassure. The look on his face was more confident than his words had been.

Aro reached out, as if to shake my hand, and pressed his insubstantial-looking skin against mine. It was hard, but felt brittle—shale rather than granite.

His filmy eyes smiled down at mine, and it was impossible to look away. They were mesmerizing in an odd, unpleasant way.

Aro's face faltered as I watched. The confidence wavered and became first doubt, then incredulity before he calmed it into a friendly mask.

"So very interesting," he said as he released my hand and drifted back.

My eyes flickered to Edward, and, though his face was composed, I thought he seemed a little smug.

Aro continued to drift with a thoughtful expression. He was quiet for a moment, his eyes flickering  between the three of us. Then, abruptly, he shook his head.

"A first," he said to himself "I wonder if he is immune to our other talents… Jane, dear?"

"No!" Edward snarled the word. Alice grabbed his arm with a restraining hand. He shook her off.

Little Jane smiled up happily at Aro. "Yes, Master?"

Edward was truly snarling now, the sound ripping and tearing from him, glaring at Aro with baleful eyes.

The room had gone still, everyone watching him with amazed disbelief, as if he were committing some embarrassing social faux pas. I saw Felix grin hopefully and move a step forward. Aro glanced at him once, and he froze in place, his grin turning to a sulky expression.

Then he spoke to Jane. "I was wondering, my dear one, if Beau is immune to you."

I could barely hear Aro over Edward's furious growls. He let go of me, moving to hide me from their  view. Caius ghosted in our direction, with his entourage, to watch.

Jane turned toward us with a beatific smile.

"Don't!" Alice cried as Edward launched himself at the little girl.

Before I could react, before anyone could jump between them, before Aro's bodyguards could tense,  Edward was on the ground.

No one had touched him, but he was on the stone floor writhing in obvious agony, while I stared in h orror.

Jane was smiling only at him now, and it all clicked together. What Alice had said about formidable gifts, why everyone treated Jane with such deference, and why Edward had thrown himself in her path before she could do that to me. 

In less than a second I was in front of Edward, a furious snarl ripping through my chest as I glared at her, crouched low in front of him.

"Stop!" I demanded, my voice echoing in the silence. 

No sound escaped Edward's lips as he cringed against the stones. It felt like my head would explode from the pain of watching this.

"Jane," Aro recalled her in a tranquil voice. She looked up quickly, still smiling with pleasure, her eyes questioning. As soon as Jane looked away, Edward was still.

Aro inclined his head toward me.

Jane turned her smile in my direction.

I didn't even meet her gaze. I watched Edward from the corner of my eyes, still concerned.

"He's fine," Alice whispered in a tight voice. As she spoke, he sat up, and then sprang lightly to his feet.

His eyes met mine, and they were horror-struck. At first I thought the horror was for what he had just  suffered. But then he looked quickly at Jane, and back to me—and his face relaxed into relief.

I looked at Jane, too, and she no longer smiled. She glared at me, her jaw clenched with the intensity of her focus. I set my shoulders, waiting for the pain.

Nothing happened.

Edward was by my side again. 

Aro started to laugh. "Ha, ha. ha," he chuckled. "This is wonderful!"

Jane hissed in frustration, leaning forward like she was preparing to spring.

"Don't be put out, dear one," Aro said in a comforting tone, placing a powder-light hand on her shoulder.

"He confounds us all."

Jane's upper lip curled back ever her teeth as she continued to glare at me.

"Ha, ha, ha," Aro chortled again. "You're very brave, Edward, to endure in silence. I asked Jane to do  that to me once—just out of curiosity." He shook his head in admiration.

Edward glared, disgusted.

"So what do we do with you now?" Aro sighed.

Edward and Alice stiffened. This was the part they'd been waiting for. 

"I don't suppose there's any chance that you've changed your mind?" Aro asked Edward hopefully.

"Your talent would be an excellent addition to our little company."

Edward hesitated. From the corner of my eye, I saw both Felix and Jane grimace.

Edward seemed to weigh each word before he spoke it. "I'd… rather… not."

"Alice?" Aro asked, still hopeful. "Would you perhaps be interested in joining with us?"

"No, thank you," Alice said.

"And you, Beau?" Aro raised his eyebrows.

Edward hissed, low in my ears. I stared at Aro blankly. Was he joking?

It was the white-haired Caius who broke the silence.

"What?" he demanded of Aro; his voice, though no more than a whisper, was flat.

"Caius, surely you see the potential," Aro chided him affectionately. "I haven't seen a prospective talent so promising since we found Jane and Alec. Can you imagine the possibilities when he is trained? Especially since he was in the crowd of humans, only days old." At that Edward whipped his head around to look at me, but I didn’t meet his gaze.

Caius looked away with a caustic expression. Jane's eyes sparked with indignation at the comparison.

Edward fumed beside me. I could hear a rumble in his chest, building toward a growl. I couldn't let his temper get him hurt.

"No, thank you," I spoke up in barely more than a whisper, my voice tight and hoarse with thirst.

Aro sighed. "That's unfortunate. Such a waste."

Edward hissed. "Join or die, is that it? I suspected as much when we were brought to this room. So  much for your laws."

The tone of his voice surprised me. He sounded irate, but there was something deliberate about his  delivery—as if he'd chosen his words with great care.

"Of course not." Aro blinked, astonished. "We were already convened here, Edward, awaiting Heidi's  return. Not for you."

"Aro," Caius hissed. "The law claims them."

Edward glared at Caius. "How so?" he demanded. He must have known what Caius was thinking, but he seemed determined to make him speak it aloud.

Caius pointed a skeletal finger at me. " You have exposed our secrets." His voice  was papery thin, just like his skin. “Beau was told of our existence when he was human. Who knows who he could have told?” A low hiss whipped up my throat, and I glared at him. How dare he? 

"There are a few humans in on your charade here, as well," Edward reminded him, and I thought of the pretty receptionist below.

Caius's face twisted into a new expression. Was it supposed to be a smile?

"Yes," he agreed. "But when they are no longer useful to us, they will serve to sustain us. That is not your plan for this one. If he betrays our secrets, are you prepared to destroy him? I think not," he scoffed. I squared my shoulders and stepped forward, ignoring Edward as he tried to grip my arm.

“If I were going to tell someone, I would have done it when I was human. Everyone I knew as a human believes me to be dead.” I challenged Caius with my gaze. 

And then Alice stepped away from us, forward toward Aro. We turned to watch her. Her hand was  raised like his.

She didn't say anything, and Aro waved off his anxious guard as they moved to block her approach. Aro met her halfway, and took her hand with an eager, acquisitive glint in his eyes.

He bent his head over their touching hands, his eyes closing as he concentrated. Alice was motionless, her face blank. I heard Edward's teeth snap together.

No one moved. Aro seemed frozen over Alice's hand. The seconds passed and I grew more and more stressed, wondering how much time would pass before it was too much time. Before it meant something was wrong—more wrong than it already was.

Another agonizing moment passed, and then Aro's voice broke the silence.

"Ha, ha, ha," he laughed, his head still bent forward. He looked up slowly, his eyes bright with

excitement. "That was fascinating!"

Alice smiled dryly. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"To see the things you've seen—especially the ones that haven't happened yet!" He shook his head in wonder.

"But that will," she reminded him, voice calm.

"Yes, yes, it's quite determined. Certainly there's no problem. He will keep our secret. He is unusually controlled as it is, for a newborn."

Caius looked bitterly disappointed—a feeling he seemed to share with Felix and Jane.

"Aro," Caius complained.

"Dear Caius," Aro smiled. "Do not fret. Think of the possibilities! They do not join us today, but we can always hope for the future. Imagine the joy young Alice alone would bring to our little household… Besides, I'm so terribly curious to see how Beau turns out!"

Aro seemed convinced. 

"Then we are free to go now?" Edward asked in an even voice.

"Yes, yes," Aro said pleasantly. "But please visit again. It's been absolutely enthralling!"

"And we will visit you as well," Caius promised, his eyes suddenly half-closed like the heavy-lidded gaze of a lizard. "To be sure that you follow through on your side. We do not offer second chances."

Edward's jaw clenched tight, but he nodded once.

Caius smirked and drifted back to where Marcus still sat, unmoving and uninterested.

Felix groaned.

"Ah, Felix." Aro smiled, amused. "Heidi will be here at any moment. Patience."

"Hmm." Edward's voice had a new edge to it. "In that case, perhaps we'd better leave sooner rather than later."

"Yes," Aro agreed. "That's a good idea. Accidents do happen. And Beau here is already very close to losing control. Please wait below until after dark, though, if you don't mind."

"Of course," Edward agreed, while I cringed at the thought of waiting out the day before we could escape.

"And here," Aro added, motioning to Felix with one finger. Felix came forward at once, and Aro  unfastened the gray cloak the huge vampire wore, pulling from his shoulders. He tossed it to Edward.

"Take this. You're a little conspicuous."

Edward put the long cloak on, leaving the hood down.

Aro sighed. "It suits you."

Edward chuckled, but broke off suddenly, glancing over his shoulder. "Thank you, Aro. We'll wait b elow." I could hear dozens of footsteps, and then the scent of blood washed over me. Aro watched as I froze, as my entire body tensed. 

“Come on Beau, it’s alright. Alice can see that you won’t hurt them.” Edward gently coaxed me to move again. Aro looked amused.

"Goodbye, young friends," Aro said, his eyes bright as he stared in the same direction.

"Let's go," Edward said, urgent now.

Demetri gestured that we should follow, and then set off the way we'd come in, the only exit by the look of things.

Edward pulled me swiftly along beside him. Alice was close by my other side, her face hard.

"Not fast enough," she muttered.

I stared up at her, frightened, but she only seemed chagrined. 

"Well this is unusual," A man's coarse voice boomed.

"So medieval," an unpleasantly shrill, female voice gushed back.

A large crowd was coming through the little door, filling the smaller stone chamber. Demetri motioned for us to make room. We pressed back against the cold wall to let them pass. I dug my fingers into the stone wall.  The couple in front, Americans from the sound of them, glanced around themselves with appraising eyes.

"Welcome, guests! Welcome to Volterra!" I could hear Aro sing from the big turret room.

The rest of them, maybe forty or more, filed in after the couple. Some studied the setting like tourists. A few even snapped pictures. Others looked confused, as if the story that had led them to this room was not making sense anymore. I noticed one small, dark woman in particular. Around her neck was a rosary, and she gripped the cross tightly in one hand. She walked more slowly than the others, touching someone now and then and asking a question in an unfamiliar language. No one seemed to understand her, and her voice grew more panicked.

Edward pulled my face against his chest, but it was too late. I already understood.

As soon as the smallest break appeared, Edward pushed me quickly toward the door. I could feel the horrified expression on my face, and the venom beginning to pool in my eyes. My throat was full of flames.

The ornate golden hallway was quiet, empty except for one gorgeous, statuesque woman. She stared at us curiously, me in particular.

"Welcome home, Heidi," Demetri greeted her from behind us.

Heidi smiled absently. She reminded me of Rosalie, though they looked nothing alike—it was just that her beauty, too, was exceptional, unforgettable. I couldn't seem to look away.

She was dressed to emphasize that beauty. Her amazingly long legs, darkened with tights, were exposed by the shortest of miniskirts. Her top was long-sleeved and high-necked, but extremely close-fitting, and constructed of red vinyl. Her long mahogany hair was lustrous, and her eyes were the strangest shade of violet—a color that might result from blue-tinted contacts over red irises.

"Demetri," she responded in a silky voice, her eyes flickering between my face and Edward's gray cloak.

"Nice fishing," Demetri complimented her, and I suddenly understood the attention-grabbing outfit she wore… she was not only the fisherman, but also the bait.

"Thanks." She flashed a stunning smile. "Aren't you coming?"

"In a minute. Save a few for me."

Heidi nodded and ducked through the door with one last curious look at me.

Edward set a pace that human me would have struggled to keep up. But we still couldn't get through the ornate door at the end of the hallway before the screaming started.


	9. Chapter 9

Demetri left us in the cheerfully opulent reception area, where the woman Gianna was still at her post behind the polished counter. Bright, harmless music tinkled from hidden speakers.

"Do not leave until dark," he warned us.

Edward nodded, and Demetri hurried away.

Gianna did not seem at all surprised by the exchange, though she did eye Edward's borrowed cloak with shrewd speculation.

"Are you all right?" Edward asked under his breath, to low for the human woman to hear. His voice was rough—if velvet can be rough—with anxiety. Still stressed by our situation, I imagined.

"You'd better make him sit before he takes off," Alice said. "He’s starting to get overwhelmed."

It was only then that I realize I was shaking, shaking hard, my entire frame vibrating until my teeth  chattered and the room around me seemed to wobble and blur in my eyes. For one wild second, I  wondered if this was how Jacob felt just before exploding into a werewolf. My tense muscles were trembling as I withheld the need to rush back into that room and rip every human into shreds.

I heard a sound that didn't make sense, a strange, ripping counterpart to the otherwise cheery  background music. Distracted by the shaking, I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"Shh, Beau, shh," Edward said as he pulled me to the sofa farthest away from the curious human at the desk. I was aware enough to pull my arm out of his grip. I ignored the hurt look on his face. 

"Maybe you should slap him," Alice suggested.

Edward threw a frantic glance at her.

Then I understood. Oh. The noise was me. The ripping sound was the low growls coming from my chest.

"It's all right, you won’t hurt them, it's all right," he chanted again and again. He sat me down on the couch the furthest away from the doors. He then made Alice sit next to me. She gently uncurled my fisted hand and slipped her fingers into the slots between mine.

I knew it was stupid to react like this. Alice was okay, he was saved, and I was saved, and he could leave me as soon as we were free. To have my senses so focused on blood and my dry throat that I could not see his features clearly was wasteful—insanity.

But, behind my eyes where the venom could not wash the image away, I could still see the panicked face of the tiny woman with the rosary.

"All those people," I whispered, torn between feeling for them and hunting them.

"I know," Alice whispered.

"It's so horrible. They’re all going to die. And I want to be a part of it." I admitting, avoiding her eyes and gripping my throat with my free hand.

"Yes, it is. I wish you hadn't had to see that."

I let my shoulders slump and leaned against her. I held my breath, trying to calm myself.

"Is there anything I can get you?" a voice asked politely. It was Gianna, leaning over Edward's shoulder with a look that was both concerned and yet still professional and detached at the same time. It didn't seem to bother her that her face was inches from a hostile vampire. She was either totally oblivious, or very good at her job. I tensed even further at her proximity and Alice tightened her grip around me.

"No," Edward answered coldly.

She nodded, smiled at me, and then disappeared.

I waited until she was out of hearing range. "Does she know what's going on here?" I demanded, my  voice low and hoarse. I was getting control of myself, able to breath again without wanting to kill every human in my sight.

"Yes. She knows everything," Edward told me.

"Does she know they're going to kill her someday?"

"She's knows it's a possibility," he said.

That surprised me.

Edward's face was hard to read. "She's hoping they'll decide to keep her."

I felt my face harden in understanding. "She wants to be one of them?"

He nodded once, his eyes sharp on my face, watching my reaction. I remember a time I had wanted this. Alice and him must be remembering as well.

I shuddered. "How can she want that?" I whispered, more to myself than really looking for an answer.

"How can she watch those people file through to that hideous room and want to be a part of that? Want to kill them all just to quench this horrible  _ burning  _ in her throat?"

Edward didn't answer. His expression twisted in response to something I'd said.

As I looked at his face, trying to understand the change, it suddenly struck me that I was really here, so close to the man who had caused me so much pain. But also close to the girl I had considered my sister. And that we were not—at this exact moment—about to be killed.

"Oh, Alice," I sighed. It was such a stupid reaction. The tears that welled up were made of venom never fell. I only had until sunset for sure. Like a fairy tale again, with deadlines that ended the magic.

"What's wrong?" She asked, rubbing my back with gentle pats. I kept my eyes away from Edward, who was hovering near us.

I wrapped my arms around her neck and hugged myself closer to him. "Is it really sick for me to be happy right now?" I asked. My voice broke twice. Yet it still sounded like the beautiful stranger in the mirror only yesterday.

She didn't push me away. She pulled me tight against her chest, so tight that I knew this was her natural strength. "But we have lots of reasons to be happy. For one, we're alive."

"Yes," I agreed. "That's a good one."

"And, with any luck, we'll still be alive tomorrow."

"Hopefully," I said uneasily.

"The outlook is quite good," Alice assured me. 

"I'll see Jasper in less than twenty-four hours," she added in a satisfied tone.

Lucky Alice. She could trust her future.

I couldn't keep my eyes on Edward's face for long. When I looked at him, the anger and pain welled up in my chest, threatening to explode. Every time my eyes flickered to him, Edward would already be staring right back at me, his dark eyes soft, my eyes steeled.

His eyes traced the dark circles under my eyes. "You look so tired." I laughed, a strangled sound. His lips twitched up into an almost smile.

"I’m not tired. I’m thirsty," I said back, eyes flickering down to the matching purple bruises under his black irises.

He looked away first. 

I had a million questions for him. One of them bubbled to my lips now, but I held my tongue. I didn't  want to ruin the quiet and peaceful moment, as imperfect as it was, here in this room that made me sick, under the eyes of the would-be monster.

I stayed quiet, looking over Alice again. I had missed her so much. 

She looked back, a smile on her face. I looked away when Alice and Edward started to discuss how to get home. Their voices were so quick and low that I knew Gianna couldn't understand. I missed half of it myself, still focusing on not losing control. It sounded like more theft would be involved, though. I wondered idly if the yellow Porsche had made it back to its owner yet.

"What was all that talk about singers?" Alice asked at one point.

"La tua cantante," Edward said. His perfect voice made the words into music. My mouth twisted slightly. The same voice who patronized me and lied to me when he said goodbye.

"Yes, that," Alice said, and I concentrated for a moment. I'd wondered about that, too, at the time.

I felt Edward shrug around me. "They have a name for someone who smells the way Beau did to me. When he was human. They call him my singer—because his blood sang for me."

Alice laughed.

Now and then, as he talked with Alice, his fingers would twitch, his eyes flickering to me. Each time it was like an electric shock to my long dormant heart. It was hell. 

I lost track of the time completely. So when both he and Alice looked to the back of the room with wary eyes, I squared my shoulders. Alec—his eyes now a vivid ruby, but still spotless in his light gray suit despite the afternoon meal—walked through the double doors. He brought with him a scent of fresh blood. I almost snapped right then and there, until he spoke.

It was good news.

"You're free to leave now," Alec told us, his tone so warm you'd think we were all lifelong friends. 

"We ask that you don't linger in the city."

Edward made no answering pretense; his voice was ice cold. "That won't be a problem."

Alec smiled, nodded, and disappeared again.

"Follow the right hallway around the corner to the first set of elevators," Gianna told us as Edward tried to help me to my feet, unnecessarily. I ignored it and stood up by myself. "The lobby is two floors down, and exits to the street. Goodbye, now," she added pleasantly. I wondered if her competence would be enough to save her.

Alice shot her a dark look.

I was relieved there was another way out; I wasn't sure if I could handle another tour through the u nderground.

We left through a tastefully luxurious lobby. I was the only one who glanced back at the medieval castle that housed the elaborate business facade I couldn't see the turret from here, for which I was grateful.

The party was still in full swing in the streets. The street lamps were just coming on as we walked swiftly through the narrow, cobbled lanes. The sky was a dull, fading gray overhead, but the buildings crowded the streets so closely that it felt darker.

The party was darker, too. Edward's long, trailing cloak did not stand out in the way it might have on a normal evening in Volterra. There were others in black satin cloaks now, and the plastic fangs I'd seen on the child in the square today seemed to be very popular with the adults.

"Ridiculous," Edward muttered once. I agreed.

I noticed when Alice disappeared from beside me. I looked over to ask her a question, and she was gone.

"Where's Alice?" I whispered in a panic.

"She went to retrieve your bags from where she stashed them this morning."

I'd forgotten that I had access to a toothbrush. It brightened my outlook considerably.

"She's stealing a car, too, isn't she?" I guessed.

His lips twitched up. "Not till we're outside."

It seemed like a very long way to the entryway. Edward could see that I was spent; but he allowed me my dignity and ignored it.

I shuddered as he led me through the dark stone archway. The huge, ancient portcullis above was like a cage door, threatening to drop on us, to lock us in.

He led me toward a dark car, waiting in a pool of shadow to the right of the gate with the engine running.

To my surprise, he slid into the backseat, instead of insisting on driving. I sat in the passengers seat.

Alice was apologetic. "I'm sorry." She gestured vaguely toward the dashboard. "There wasn't much to choose from."

"It's fine, Alice." He grinned. "They can't all be 911 Turbos."

She sighed. "I may have to acquire one of those legally. It was fabulous."

"I'll get you one for Christmas," Edward promised.

Alice turned to beam at him, which worried me, as she was already speeding down the dark and curvy hillside at the same time.

"Yellow," she told him.

"You can relax now, Beau," Alice murmured. "It's over."

I knew she meant the danger, the nightmare in the ancient city, but I still had to swallow hard.

The car was only dimly lit by the dashboard controls, but I could see her face perfectly.

"Try," she encouraged. My muscles refused to relax.

She sighed. "You're still just as stubborn."

An hour later Alice parked next to the road, the woods to our left. So we could hunt. I immediately took off, finding a big cat within a minute. I almost cried when it’s blood flowed down my throat. I took down another cat, and four deer before I was even remotely satisfied. I turned, realized Edward was still there. He was watching me, a pained yet awed look on his face. I closed my eyes, and turned away. I waited while he hunted. 

I watched carefully to see how he was able to hunt so neatly.

All the times that I had wished that Edward would not have to leave me behind when he hunted, I had secretly been just a little relieved. Because I was sure that seeing this would be frightening. 

Horrifying. That seeing him hunt would finally make him look like a vampire to me.

Of course, it was much different from this perspective, as a vampire myself. But I doubted that even my human eyes would have missed the beauty here. Even as my heart raged in my chest to leave, to get as far away from him so I could break down in peace.

His smooth spring was like the sinuous strike of a snake; his hands were so sure, so strong, so completely inescapable; his full lips were perfect as they parted gracefully over his gleaming teeth. He was glorious. I felt a sudden jolt of pure grief. 

He wasn’t mine. I don’t think he was ever truly mine. He was very quick. He turned to me and gazed curiously at my pained expression. I waved him off, turning and making my way back to the car. He followed. 

The dark road was the hardest part; the bright lights at the airport in Florence made it easier, as did the chance to brush my teeth and change into clean clothes; Alice bought Edward new clothes, too, and he left the dark cloak on a pile of trash in an alley. The plane trip to Rome was short. I didn't have time to focus on the beating hearts around me. I knew the flight from Rome to Atlanta would be another matter entirely.

Alice was behind us. I could hear her murmuring to Jasper on the phone.

It would have been a very good time to talk, to get the answers I needed—needed but not really wanted; I was already despairing at the thought of what I might hear. We had an uninterrupted block of time ahead of us, and he couldn't escape me on an airplane—well, not easily, at least. No one would hear us except Alice; it was late, and most of the passengers were turning off lights and asking for pillows in muted voices. Talk would help me fight off the bloodlust.

But, perversely, I bit my tongue against the flood of questions. My reasoning was probably flawed by not being able to focus, but I hoped that by postponing the discussion, I could buy a few more hours with him at some later time of even the small bit of peace I had—spin this out for another night, Scheherazade-style.

Edward didn't speak. Maybe he was hoping I wouldn't either. Maybe he had nothing to say.

I won the fight against my bloodlust, as Alice told me I would. I was in control when we reached the airport in Atlanta, and I watched the sun beginning to rise over Seattle's cloud cover before Edward slid the window shut. I was proud of myself. I hadn't slipped once.

Neither Alice nor Edward was surprised by the reception that waited for us at Sea-Tac airport, but it  caught me off guard. Jasper was the first one I saw—he didn't seem to see me at all. His eyes were only for Alice. She went quickly to his side; they didn't embrace like other couples meeting there. 

They only stared into each other's faces, yet, somehow, the moment was so private that I still felt the need to look away. My heart throbbed in my chest.

Carlisle and Esme waited in a quiet corner far from the line for the metal detectors, in the shadow of a wide pillar. Esme reached for me, disregarding my immortal appearance entirely, hugging me fiercely, yet awkwardly, the absence of them almost a tangible thing.

"Thank you so much," she said in my ear.

Then she threw her arms around Edward, and she looked like she would be crying if that were possible.

"You will never put me through that again," she nearly growled.

Edward grinned, repentant. "Sorry, Mom."

"Thank you, Beau," Carlisle said. "We owe you."

"Hardly," I mumbled, my voice tense with effort. The bloodlust was suddenly overpowering. Near hundreds of people. My head felt disconnected from my body. Jasper gravitated closer to me, wary.

"He needs to get out of here, with all these people," Esme scolded Edward. "Let's get him home."

Not sure if home was what I wanted at this point, I followed, watching the floor, through the airport, Edward dragging me on one side and Esme on the other. I didn't know if Alice and Jasper were behind us or not, and I was too overwhelmed to look or listen for them.

I think I was mostly relaxed, when we reached their car. The surprise of seeing Emmett and Rosalie leaning against the black sedan under the dim lights of the parking garage revived me some. 

Edward stiffened.

"Don't," Esme whispered. "She feels awful."

"She should," Edward said, making no attempt to keep his voice down.

"It's not her fault," I said, my voice quiet, but the steel in it made him swallow.

"Let her make amends," Esme pleaded. "We'll ride with Alice and Jasper."

Edward glowered at the absurdly lovely blond vampire waiting for us.

"Edward," Was all I said. I didn't want to ride with Rosalie any more than he seemed to, but I'd caused more than enough discord in his family. And I was done taking orders.

He sighed, and followed me toward the car.

Emmett and Rosalie got in the front seat without speaking, while Edward pulled me in the back again. I felt the car purr to life.

"Edward," Rosalie began. Her voice was even more beautiful than I remembered. 

"I know." Edward's brusque tone was not generous.

"Beau?" Rosalie asked softly.

My eyelids fluttered open in shock. It was the first time she'd ever spoken directly to me.

"Yes, Rosalie?" I asked, hesitant.

"I'm so very sorry, Beau. I feel wretched about every part of this, and so grateful that you were brave  enough to go save my brother after what I did. After what he did. Even in your current situation. Please say you'll forgive me."

The words were awkward, stilted because of her embarrassment, but they seemed sincere.

"Of course, Rosalie," I mumbled, grasping at any chance to make her hate me a little less. "It's not your fault at all. I'm the one who went in the damn forest. Of course I forgive you."

The words came out nearly inaudible. Edward cringed at the mention of my transformation.

It was quiet then, except for the gentle thrum of the engine. I fell into a sort of trance, lying against the leather seats. It seemed like seconds later when the door opened and Edward held the door open for me. I caught a whiff of wolves and cringed as I got out.

“Carlisle, Esme, I’m sorry for staying in your home while you were gone. I’m also sorry that the wolves stayed with me, I got used to the smell but I’m sure you guys aren’t.” At my words, everyone turned to look at me in astonishment. 

“The wolves?” Carlisle asked, surprise coloring his voice. He scented the air, and nodded to himself.

“They’re the ones who saved me. Laurent would’ve killed me if the wolves didn’t get to me in time. They brought me here and watched over me, during my...um...my transformation.” Emmett’s booming laughter filled the night.

“You were rooming with wolves? That’s badass Beau.” He chuckled, wrinkling his nose as he opened the door. 

“I can help clean, if you want.” I offered, eyes flickering to Esme. 

“Oh no dear, it’s no problem. I’m capable of doing it. You’ve been through a lot. You need time to just be.” Her words warmed my heart, and I nodded.

Before I could make it into the house, I heard footsteps coming from the forest. I took in a breath and felt a smile spread across my face. 

“Jake!” I cried, speeding to his side and wrapping him in a hug. He laughed and gripped me back, skin warm on mine. 

“Jesus Beau, thank god you’re okay. Care to tell me what happened?” He demanded, but a grin was still on his face so I knew I wasn’t in any real trouble. 

“Another time. It’s a long story.” I conceded, and looked towards the waiting Cullen’s. I heard Sam come up next to us. 

“Come on, I’ll introduce you.” I said, and we walked at a human pace towards the vampires. Neither wolf was too enthused about meeting the family that abandoned me, I could tell. They walked until they were a step ahead of me, almost protectively. I smiled softly at them, feeling warmth spread through my body. They cared about me. Deeply.

“Sam, this is Carlisle. Carlisle, this is Sam Uley, alpha of the Quileute pack.” I introduced formally, knowing how important first impressions were with both leaders. 

“It’s very nice to meet you, Sam. Beau told us how you protected him, and we’re very grateful.” I stared hard at Sam, knowing he wanted to snort, but his face only twitched slightly. Sam just nodded to him.

“Sam, that’s Esme, Carlisle's wife. That’s Rosalie and Emmett,” I started, pointing them out as I said their names. “That’s Alice and Jasper.” Finally, one name left. I fought the urge to clear my throat and continued. “That’s Edward.” Both wolves shifted on their feet. I knew they wanted to rip him apart for what they thought he did to me. 

“It’s okay, guys.” I said stiffly, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. Jake rolled his eyes, but they both forced themselves to relax. 

“Guys, this is Jacob Black.” I finally introduced him, and Jake waved slightly awkwardly, making me snort. He bumped his shoulder with mine harshly, enough to move me, and I did the same. 

“We apologize for taking residence in your home. But it was the only safe place for Beau while he changed and controlled his thirst.” Sam said, making eye contact with Carlisle. 

“As we told Beau, it’s quite alright. No harm done.” Carlisle said warmly, and I fought the urge to barrel him over with a hug. I had missed him so much. I had missed them all so much. With one last nod to the coven leader, Sam turned to me. 

“If you need me, you have my number. If it’s an emergency, I allow you to cross onto our land and find one of us. Do you need anything before I go?” Sam asked gently, and emotions washed over me. He had treated me so fatherly, like Charlie had. I embraced him fiercely, careful to control my strength. 

“Thank you, Sam.” I whispered, before letting go and stepping back, embarrassed. The Cullen’s were still watching, although discreetly. He smiled warmly at me and ruffled my hair, before jogging towards the forest. That left Jake. 

“Same for me. If you need me, you know where to find me. I’ll come over first thing tomorrow, alright?” He pulled me into a searingly hot hug that I melted into. He swayed us a little, before pulling back. 

“Thank you, Jake. I don’t know what I’d be without you.” I tried to express my gratitude in my words. 

“Dead, probably.” He smirked, making me bark out a startled laugh. I shoved him slightly, still grinning. 

“Go on, pup, you need to get back home to Billy.” He rolled his eyes at my choice of words before he followed after Sam. I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath before turning around to face the Cullen’s again. 

“Um, I don’t have to stay here with you guys if you don’t want me to.” I said, a bit awkwardly. I studiously ignored Edward, looking at Carlisle.

“Don’t be absurd, Beau. You’re always welcome, and you still need time to adjust.” He said, and held his arms out for a hug. I barrelled into him in milliseconds, breathing in his familiar scent. He was my second father, and now, without Charlie, I needed his comfort. He held me gently, but firmly, expressing his own emotions into the hug. I pulled back and smiled at him, mumbling a thank you.

Then the Cullen’s made their way inside. Edward stayed behind. It was just me and him now. 

“I’m sorry, by the way. I stayed in your room a lot. Mostly when I was changing. I washed the stuff that had blood on it though.” I said, staring at the ground. 

“No need to apologize, Beau.” He said softly, approaching me slowly. This was it. This was when he was going to tell me that he still didn’t want me. I braced myself for the rejection. He sighed, stopping right in front of me.

He stared deep into my eyes with his sincere, earnest gaze. "I'm a good liar, Beau, I have to be."

I froze, my muscles locking down as if for impact. The fault line in my chest rippled; the pain of it took my breath away.

He shook my shoulder, trying to loosen my rigid pose. "Let me finish! I'm a good liar, but still, for you to believe me so quickly." He winced. "That was… excruciating."

I waited, still frozen.

"When we were in the forest, when I was telling you goodbye—"

I didn't allow myself to remember. I fought to keep myself in the present second only.

"You weren't going to let go," he whispered. "I could see that. I didn't want to do it—it felt like it would  kill me to do it—but I knew that if I couldn't convince you that I didn't love you anymore, it would just  take you that much longer to get on with your life. I hoped that, if you thought I'd moved on, so would y ou."

"A clean break," I said through clenched teeth.

"Exactly. But I never imagined it would be so easy to do! I thought it would be next to impossible—that you would be so sure of the truth that I would have to lie through my teeth for hours to even plant the seed of doubt in your head. I lied, and I'm so sorry—sorry because I hurt you, sorry because it was a worthless effort. Sorry that I couldn't protect you from what I am. I lied to save you, and it didn't work. I'm sorry.

"But how could you believe me? After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?"

I didn't answer. I was too shocked to form a rational response.

"I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn't want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept—as if there were any way that I could exist without needing you!"

I was still frozen. His words were incomprehensible, because they were impossible.

He shook my shoulder again, not hard, but enough that my teeth rattled a little.

"Beau," he sighed. "Really, what were you thinking!"

That’s when I broke. That’s when I started to shout. 

“You  _ knew! _ ” I yelled, body shaking with anger. “You knew how I felt about you. How insecure I was, being human and being with someone who I viewed to be a god! Yet you still said those words. You still decided to break my heart. I would’ve felt less pain than if you had turned me right then and there.” I seethed, the anger making venom well up into my eyes. He winced, and stepped back, as if I had pushed him.

"I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn't want you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy." He whispered.

I shook my head.

"It took me awhile, to realize that you left to try to protect me. But god Edward. What the fuck were you thinking? You had all the information. Victoria was still out there. You didn’t even consider that leaving me was one of the most dangerous things you could do.” I paused for a moment, collecting my thoughts.

"It never made sense for you to love me," I explained, my voice breaking twice. "I always knew that. I had no sense of self worth. Especially after you left me. I would’ve done anything for you. But you decide to take away one of the best things in my life. Your family. All because of an accident that was bound to happen. Which was no one's fault, by the way. "

He stared at me, allowing me to let out all those months worth of anger and pain. 

“Jacob was the one who told me what you had left. That I was worth loving. It should have been you. But you made the choice all by yourself. Against anyone’s better judgment, you took matters into your own hands. You thought your decision was worth it. But was it really?” I asked, hands clenched. I knew everyone could hear me. But I didn’t care. I wanted them to hear. 

“I don’t know what to do now.” I said tiredly, running a hand through my longer hair. I had been meaning to get a haircut lately, but had never had the chance. 

“I need time. I need space.” I said, and he nodded. 

“I know. I realize now that the decision I made was a mistake. It took your death and rebirth for me to understand. And I deserve this.” I scoffed. 

“You need to have some self worth too.” I said, pointing a finger at him. 

“If we end up together again, it will be a relationship of equals. I am not better than you. You are not better than me.” With that, I stepped back. Letting what I said sink in. 

I stared at him darkly for a long moment. "The way I feel about you will never change. Of course I love you! But you need to understand some things. You need to get over yourself and understand that there are other people in this equation." He took a deep breath, before speaking.

"I only left you in the first place because I wanted you to have a chance at a normal, happy, human life. I could see what I was doing to you—keeping you constantly on the edge of danger, taking you away from the world you belonged in, risking your life every moment I was with you. So I had to try. I had to do something, and it seemed like leaving was the only way. If I hadn't thought you would be better off, I could have never made myself leave. I'm much too selfish. Only you could be more important than what I wanted… what I needed. What I want and need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again. I have too many excuses to stay—thank heaven for that! It seems you can't be safe, no matter how many miles I put between us. But I know now. I know I made the wrong choice. I should have let you decide."

"You’re damn right you should have." I whispered. 

I thought back over those last days of my life before he left me, tried to see them through the filter of  what he was telling me now. From that perspective, imagining that he'd left me while loving me, left me for me, his brooding and cold silences took on a different meaning. "It isn't as if you hadn't thought the first decision through, is it?" I guessed. 

"You'll end up doing what you think is right."

"I'm not as strong as you give me credit for," he said. "Right and wrong have ceased to mean much to me; I was coming back anyway. Before Rosalie told me the news, I was already past trying to live  through one week at a time, or even one day. I was fighting to make it through a single hour. It was only a matter of time—and not much of it—before I showed up at your window and begged you to take me back. I'd be happy to beg now, if you'd like that."

I grimaced. "Be serious, please."

"Oh, I am," he insisted, glaring now. "Will you please try to hear what I'm telling you? Will you let me  attempt to explain what you mean to me?"

He waited, studying my face as he spoke to make sure I was really listening.

"Before you, Beau, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light  and reason… And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there  was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon,  everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."

I wanted to believe him. But that was what my life had been without him that he was describing, not the other way around.

"Your eyes will adjust," I mumbled.

"That's just the problem—they can't."

"What about your distractions?"

He laughed without a trace of humor. "Just part of the lie, love. There was no distraction from the… the agony. My heart hasn't beat in almost ninety years, but this was different. It was like my heart was gone—like I was hollow. Like I'd left everything that was inside me here with you."

"That's funny," I muttered.

He arched one perfect eyebrow. "Funny? "

"I meant strange—I thought it was just me. Lots of pieces of me went missing, too. I haven't been able to really breathe in so long." I filled my lungs, luxuriating in the sensation that I no longer needed.. "And my heart. That was definitely lost. But I pieced it back together on my own. With other’s help of course. But it was me who remade myself."

"Tracking wasn't a distraction then?" I asked, curious, and also needing to distract myself. I was very  much in danger of hoping. I wouldn't be able to stop myself for long. My heart throbbed, singing yet silent in my chest.

"No." He sighed. "That was never a distraction. It was an obligation."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that, even though I never expected any danger from Victoria, I wasn't going to let her get away with… Well, like I said, I was horrible at it. I traced her as far as Texas, but then I followed a false lead down to Brazil—and really she came here." He groaned. "I wasn't even on the right continent! And all the while, worse than my worst fears—"

"You were hunting Victoria?" I half-shouted as soon as I could find my voice, shooting through two o ctaves.

"Not well," Edward answered, studying my outraged expression with a confused look. "But I'll do better this time. She won't be tainting perfectly good air by breathing in and out for much longer."

"That is… out of the question," I managed to choke out. Insanity. Even if he had Emmett or Jasper help him. Even if he had Emmett and Jasper help. It was worse than my other imaginings: Jacob Black standing across a small space from Victoria's vicious and feline figure. I couldn't bear to picture Edward there, even though he was so much more durable than my half-human best friend. Even infuriated at him, I still cared.

"It's too late for her. I might have let the other time slide, but not now, not after—"

I interrupted him again, trying to sound calm. "Didn't you just promise that you weren't going to leave?" I asked, fighting the words as I said them, nor letting them plant themselves in my heart.

"That isn't exactly compatible with an extended tracking expedition, is it?"

He frowned. A snarl began to build low in his chest. "I will keep my promise, Beau. But Victoria"—the  snarl became more pronounced—"is going to die. Soon."

"Let's not be hasty," I said, trying to hide my panic. "Maybe she's not coming back. Sam’s pack probably scared her off. There's really no reason to go looking for her. Besides, I've got bigger problems than Victoria."

Edward's eyes narrowed, but he nodded. "It's true. The werewolves are a problem."

I snorted. "I wasn't talking about the wolves. My problems are a lot worse than a handful of adolescent wolves getting themselves into trouble."

Edward looked as if he were about to say something, and then thought better of it. His teeth clicked  together, and he spoke through them. "Really?" he asked. "Then what would be your greatest problem? That would make Victoria's returning for you seem like such an inconsequential matter in comparison?"

"How about the second greatest?" I hedged.

"All right," he agreed, suspicious.

I paused. "I still need to control my bloodlust," I reminded him in a subdued whisper.

He sighed, but the reaction was not as strong as I would have imagined after his response to Victoria.

"Well, we have plenty of time, Beau.” Do we, though? The harsh pain of this question made me realize that I'd already begun to hope, without giving myself permission to do so.

"You don't have to be worried," he said, anxious as he watched the tears dew up again on the rims of my eyes. "You won’t hurt anyone."

"While you're here."

He took a few steps forward while his midnight eyes glared into mine with the gravitational force of a black hole. "I will never leave you again."

“Of course…" He hesitated, flinching slightly. "If you outgrew me—if you wanted something more—I  would understand that, Beau. I promise I wouldn't stand in your way if you wanted to leave me. I certainly deserve it, for what I did."

His eyes were liquid onyx and utterly sincere. He spoke as if he'd put endless amounts of thought into this asinine plan.

We glowered at each other for a long minute.

Then I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked, and it made my heart clench to see that this idea hurt him, though he tried not to show it.

"No," I told him. "I'm leaving."

"May I ask where you are going?'" he asked.

"I'm going to hunt. So I don’t destroy the trees," I told him, holding onto my anger and pain so it didn’t explode out of me. He nodded, accepting my plan. I started towards the forest, making it clear that I needed to be alone. He stayed, watching me disappear. 


End file.
